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Title: The Chronicles of Newgate, vol. 2/2

Author: Arthur Griffiths

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
CHRONICLES OF NEWGATE, VOL. 2/2 ***

Every attempt has been made to
replicate the original as printed.
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been corrected; a list follows the
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Contents of Vol. II.
List of Illustrations.
Footnotes.
Index.: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M,
N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, Y.
(etext transcriber's note)

An Inner Gate.

THE
CHRONICLES OF NEWGATE
BY
ARTHUR GRIFFITHS
MAJOR LATE 63RD REGIMENT; ONE OF H. M. INSPECTORS OF PRISONS
AUTHOR OF “THE MEMORIALS OF MILLBANK,” ETC., ETC.

IN TWO VOLUMES.—VOL. II.

LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL
(Limited)
1884
[All rights reserved.]

Bungay:

CLAY AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS.

CONTENTS OF VOL II.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
CRIMES AND CRIMINALS 1
CHAPTER II.
NEWGATE DOWN TO 1818 66
CHAPTER III.
PHILANTHROPY IN NEWGATE 114
CHAPTER IV.
THE BEGINNINGS OF PRISON REFORM 147
CHAPTER V.
THE FIRST REPORT OF THE INSPECTORS OF PRISONS 187

CHAPTER VI.
EXECUTIONS (continued) 231
CHAPTER VII.
NEWGATE NOTORIETIES 274
CHAPTER VIII.
NEWGATE NOTORIETIES (continued) 337
CHAPTER IX.
LATER RECORDS 399
CHAPTER X.
NEWGATE NOTORIETIES 430
CHAPTER XI.
NEWGATE REFORMED 475

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

VOL. II.
PAGE
AN INNER GATE Frontispiece
CHARLES PRICE, alias OLD PATCH 18
JUSTICE HALL IN THE OLD BAILEY To face p. 36
WHIPPING AT THE OLD BAILEY To face p. 50
REV. MR. WHITFIELD PREACHING ON KENNINGTON COMMON To face p. 118
ENTRANCE TO MRS. FRY’S WARD To face p. 143
BELLINGHAM 244
PREPARING FOR AN EXECUTION To face p. 246
EXHIBITION OF BODY OF WILLIAMS To face p. 267
CONSPIRATORS’ STABLE IN CATO STREET To face p. 281
FAUNTLEROY IN THE DOCK 297
COURVOISIER 349
EXECUTION SHED (1883) To face p. 427
INTERIOR OF CHAPEL (1880) To face p. 498

CHRONICLES OF NEWGATE.

CHAPTER I.

CRIMES AND CRIMINALS.
State of crime on opening new gaol—Newgate full—Executions very numerous—Ruthless penal
code—Forgery punished with death—Its frequency—How fostered—Some notable forgers—The
first forgery of Bank of England notes—Gibson—Bolland—The two Perreaus—Dr. Dodd—
Charles Price, alias Old Patch—Clipping still largely practised—John Clarke hanged for it—Also
William Guest, a clerk in Bank of England—His elaborate apparatus for filing guineas—Coining—
Forty or fifty private mints for making counterfeits—Always at work—Town and country orders
regularly executed—650 prosecutions for coining in seven years—Offences against life and
property—Streets unsafe—High roads infested by robbers—No regular police—Inefficiency of
watchmen—Assaults on the weaker sex—Renwick Williams “the monster”—Daring Robberies at
lévees—The Duke of Beaufort robbed by gentleman Harry—George Barrington, the gentleman
thief, frequents Ranelagh, the Palace, the Opera House—His depredations—He aids authorities to
suppress a mutiny, turns police officer and becomes chief constable of New South Wales before he
dies—Gentlemen of the road ubiquitous and always busy—Highwaymen put down by the horse
patrol—Horse patrol described—Executions still numerous, but transportation now adopted as a
secondary punishment for lesser offenders—Some of these described—“Long firm” swindlers—
Alexander Day, alias Marmaduke Davenport, Esq.—Female Sharpers—Elizabeth Grieve pretends
to sell places under the Crown—So does David James Dignam—Traffic in places flourished in this
corrupt age—Mrs. Clarke and the Duke of York—Other forms of swindling—Jacques defrauds
Warden of the Fleet—Juvenile depravity—Increased by committing the young to Newgate—
Various youthful crimes—A girl for sale—Prize-fighting—Writers in gaol—The North Briton—
Wilkes—The Press oppressed—Mr. Walter of the ‘Times’ in Newgate—Sir Francis Burdett and
Mr. John Gale Jones—William Cobbett in Newgate—Also the Marquis of Sligo.

IN the years immediately following the erection of the new gaol, crime was
once more greatly in the ascendant. After the peace which gave
independence to the United States, the country was overrun with discharged
soldiers and sailors. They were mostly in dire poverty, and took to
depredation almost as a matter of course. The calendars were particularly
heavy. At the September Sessions of the Old Bailey in 1783, fifty-eight
were convicted for capital offences. The Deputy Recorder, in passing
sentence, remarked that it gave him inexpressible pain, and that it was truly
alarming “to behold a bar so crowded with persons whose wickedness and
imprudence had induced them to commit such enormous crimes as the laws
of their country justly and necessarily punish with death. Those laws,” he
added, being thoroughly imbued with the ferocious spirit of the times,
“while they are founded in equity, and executed with lenity, (!) impartiality,
and rectitude, are written in blood.” The exemplary punishment of so many

failed to have a very deterrent effect. In the December Sessions following
the number of trials was greater, although there were not so many capital
convictions. Twenty-four received sentence of death, and ninety were
convicted of single felonies. “Two such sessions,” says a contemporary
writer, “were never known before in London.” The same depravity, dealt
with in the same ruthless manner, prevailed throughout England. In the Lent
Assizes of 1785 the judges on every circuit dealt out death with a liberal
hand. At Kingston there were twenty-one capital sentences, and nine
executions. At Lincoln twelve of the former, and at Gloucester sixteen,
with, in both cases, nine executions; seven executions at Warwick, six at
Exeter, Winchester, and Salisbury, five at Shrewsbury, and so on. The total
number of capital sentences in England alone was two hundred and forty-
two, of whom one hundred and three suffered, and only at Stafford,
Oakham, and Ludlow was there a “maiden assize,” or no capital conviction.
At this date there were forty-nine persons lying in Newgate under sentence
of death, one hundred and eighty under sentence of transportation, and
prisoners of other categories, making the total prison population up to
nearly six hundred souls.
Speaking of those times, Mr. Townshend, a veteran Bow Street runner, in
his evidence before a Parliamentary Committee in 1816,[1] declared that in
the years 1781-7 as many as twelve, sixteen, or twenty were hanged at one
execution; twice he saw forty hanged at one time. In 1783 there were
twenty at two consecutive executions. He had known, he said, as many as
two hundred and twenty tried at one sessions. He had himself obtained
convictions of from thirteen to twenty-five for returning from
transportation. Upon the same authority we are told that in 1783 the
Secretary of State advised the King to punish with all severity. The
enormity of the offences was so great, says Mr. Townshend, and “plunder
had got to such an alarming pitch,” that a letter was circulated among
judges and recorders then sitting, to the effect that His Majesty would
dispense with the recorders’ reports, and that the worst criminals should be
picked out and at once ordered for execution.
The penal code was at this period still ruthlessly severe. There were
some two hundred capital felonies upon the statute book. Almost any
member of parliament eager to do his share in legislation could “create a
capital felony.” A story is told of Edmund Burke, that he was leaving his
house one day in a hurry, when a messenger called him back on a matter

which would not detain him a minute: “Only a felony without benefit of
clergy.” Burke also told Sir James Mackintosh, that although scarcely
entitled to ask a favour of the ministry, he thought he had influence enough
to create a capital felony.[2] It is true that of the two hundred, not more than
five-and-twenty sorts of felonies actually entailed execution. It is true too
that some of the most outrageous and ridiculous reasons for its infliction
had disappeared. It was no longer death to take a falcon’s egg from the nest,
nor was it a hanging matter to be thrice guilty of exporting live sheep. But a
man’s life was still appraised at five shillings. Stealing from the person, or
in a dwelling, or in a shop, or on a navigable river, to that amount, was
punished with death. “I think it not right nor justice,” wrote Sir Thomas
More in 1516, “that the loss of money should cause the loss of man’s life;
for mine opinion is that all the goods in the world are not able to countervail
man’s life.” Three hundred years was still to pass before the strenuous
efforts of Sir Samuel Romilly bore fruit in the amelioration of the penal
code. In 1810 he carried a bill through the House of Commons, which was,
however, rejected by the Lords, to abolish capital punishment for stealing to
the amount of five shillings in a shop. His most bitter opponents were the
great lawyers of the times, Lords Ellenborough, Eldon, and others, Lords
Chancellors and Lords Chief Justice, who opposed dangerous innovations,
and viewed with dismay any attempt “to alter laws which a century had
proved to be necessary.” Lord Eldon on this occasion said that he was
firmly convinced of the wisdom of the principles and practice of our
criminal code. Romilly did not live to see the triumph of his philanthropic
endeavours. He failed to procure the repeal of the cruel laws against which
he raised his voice, but he stopped the hateful legislation which multiplied
capital felonies year by year, and his illustrious example found many
imitators. Within a few years milder and more humane ideas very generally
prevailed. In 1837 the number of offences to which the extreme penalty
could be applied was only seven, and in that year only eight persons were
executed, all of them for murders of an atrocious character.[3]
Forgery, at the period of which I am now treating, was an offence
especially repugnant to the law. No one guilty of it could hope to escape the
gallows. The punishment was so certain, that as milder principles gained
ground, many benevolent persons gladly withdrew from prosecution where
they could. Instances were known in which bankers and other opulent
people compromised with the delinquent rather than be responsible for

taking away a fellow-creature’s life.[4] The prosecutor would sometimes
pretend his pockets had been picked of the forged instrument, or he
destroyed it, or refused to produce it. An important witness sometimes kept
out of the way. Persons have gone so far as to meet forged bills of
exchange, and to a large amount. In one case it was pretty certain they
would not have advanced the money had the punishment been short of
death, because the culprit had already behaved disgracefully, and they had
no desire he should escape a lesser retribution. Prosecutors have forfeited
their recognizances sooner than appear, and have even, when duly sworn,
withheld a portion of their testimony.
But at the time of which I am now writing the law generally took its
course. In the years between 1805 and 1818 there had been two hundred
and seven executions for forgery; more than for either murder, burglary, or
robbery from the person. It may be remarked here that the Bank of England
was by far the most bitter and implacable as regards prosecutions for
forgery. Of the above-mentioned two hundred and seven executions for this
crime, no less than seventy-two were the victims of proceedings instituted
by the Bank. Forgeries upon this great monetary corporation had been much
more frequent since the stoppage of specie payments, which had been
decreed by Parliament in 1797 to save the Bank from collapse. Alarms of
invasion had produced such a run upon it, that on one particular day little
more than a million in cash or bullion remained in the cellars, which had
already been drained of specie for foreign subsidies and subventions.
Following the cessation of cash payments to redeem its paper in circulation,
the Bank had commenced the issue of notes to the value of less than five
pounds, and it was soon found that these, especially the one-pound notes,
were repeatedly forged. In the eight years preceding 1797 but few
prosecutions had been instituted by the Bank; but in the eight immediately
following there were one hundred and forty-six convictions for the offence.
At last, about 1818, a strong and general feeling of dissatisfaction grew rife
against these prosecutions. The crime had continued steadily to increase, in
spite of the awful penalties conviction entailed. It was proved, moreover,
that note forgery was easily accomplished. Detection, too, was most
difficult. The public were unable to distinguish between the good and bad
notes. Bank officials were themselves often deceived, and cases were
known where the clerks had refused payment of the genuine article. Juries
began to decline to convict on the evidence of inspectors and clerks, unless

substantiated by the revelation of the private mark, a highly inconvenient
practice, which the Bank itself naturally discountenanced. Efforts were
made to improve the quality of the note, so as to defy imitation; but this
could not well be done at the price, and, as the only effective remedy, specie
payments were resumed, and the one-pound note withdrawn from
circulation.[5] But execution for forgery continued to be the law for many
more years. Fauntleroy suffered for it in 1824;[6] Joseph Hunton, the
Quaker linen-draper, in 1828; and Maynard, the last, in the following year.
I am, however, anticipating somewhat, and must retrace my steps, and
indicate briefly one or two of the early forgers who passed through Newgate
and suffered for the crime. The first case I find recorded is that of Richard
Vaughan, a linen-draper of Stafford, who was committed to Newgate in
March, 1758, for counterfeiting Bank of England notes. He employed
several artists to engrave the notes in various parts, one of whom informed
against him. The value of the note he himself added. Twenty which he had
thus filled up he had deposited in the hands of a young lady to whom he
was paying his addresses, as a guarantee of his wealth. Vaughan no doubt
suffered, although I see no record of the fact in the Newgate Calendar.
Mr. Gibson’s was a curious case. He was a prisoner in Newgate for
eighteen months between conviction and execution, the jury having found a
special verdict, subject to the determination of the twelve judges. As Gibson
remained so long in gaol, it was the general opinion that no further notice
would be taken of the case. The prisoner himself must have been buoyed up
with this hope, as he petitioned repeatedly for judgment. He had been
sentenced in Sept. 1766, and in 1768, at Hilary Term, the judges decided
that his crime came within the meaning of the law. Gibson had been a
solicitor’s clerk, who gave so much satisfaction that he was taken into
partnership. The firm was doing a large business, and among other large
affairs was intrusted with a Chancery case, respecting an estate for which an
ad interim receiver had been appointed. Gibson’s way of life was immoral
and extravagant. He had urgent need of funds, and in an evil hour he forged
the signature of the Accountant-General to the Court of Chancery, and so
obtained possession of some of the rents of the above-mentioned estate. The
fraud was presently discovered; Gibson was arrested, and eventually, as
already stated, condemned. “After sentence,” says the Calendar, “his
behaviour was in every way becoming his awful situation; ... he appeared
rational, serious, and devout. His behaviour was so pious, so resigned, and

in all respects so admirably adapted to his unhappy situation, that the tears
of the commiserating multitude accompanied his last ejaculation. He was
carried to execution in a mourning coach,” an especial honour reserved for
malefactors of aristocratic antecedents and gentle birth.
James Bolland, who was executed in 1772, deserved and certainly
obtained less sympathy. Bolland long filled the post of a sheriff’s officer,
and as such became the lessee of a spunging-house, where he practised
boundless extortion. He was a man of profligate life, whose means never
equalled his extravagant self-indulgence, and he was put to all manner of
shifts to get money. More than once he arrested debtors, was paid all claims
in full, and appropriated the money to his own use, yet escaped due
retribution for his fraud. He employed bullies, spies, and indigent attorneys
to second his efforts, some of whom were arrested and convicted of other
crimes with the clothes Bolland provided them still on their backs. His
character was so infamous, that when he purchased the situation of upper
city marshal for £2400, the court of aldermen would not approve of the
appointment. He tried also to succeed to a vacancy as Sergeant-at-mace,
and met with the same objection. The deposit-money paid over in both
these affairs was attached by his sureties, and he was driven to great
necessities for funds. When called upon to redeem a note of hand he had
given, he pleaded that he was short of cash, and offered another man’s bill,
which, however, was refused unless endorsed. Bolland then proceeded to
endorse it with his own name, but it was declared unnegotiable, owing to
the villanous character it bore. Whereupon Bolland erased all the letters
after the capital, and substituted the letters “anks,” the name of Banks being
that of a respectable victualler of Rathbone Place, in a large way of trade.
When the bill became due, Banks repudiated his signature, and Bolland,
who sought too late to meet it and hush up the affair, was arrested for the
forgery. He was tried and executed in due course.
The case of the twin brothers Perreau in 1776 was long the talk of the
town. It evoked much public sympathy, as they were deemed to be the
dupes of a certain Mrs. Rudd, who lived with Daniel Perreau, and passed as
his wife. Daniel was a man of reputed good means, with a house in Harley
Street, which he kept up well. His brother, Robert Perreau, was a surgeon
enjoying a large practice, and residing in Golden Square. The forged deed
was a bond for £7500, purporting to be signed by William Adair, a well-
known agent. Daniel Perreau handed this to Robert Drummond Perreau,

who carried it to the Bank, where its validity was questioned, and the
brothers, with Mrs. Rudd, were arrested on suspicion of forgery. Daniel on
his trial solemnly declared that he had received the instrument from Mrs.
Rudd; Robert’s defence was that he had no notion the document was forged.
Both were, however, convicted of knowingly uttering the counterfeit bond.
It was, however, found impossible to prove Mrs. Rudd’s complicity in the
transaction, and she was acquitted. The general feeling was, however, so
strong that she was the guilty person, that the unfortunate Perreaus became
a centre of interest. Strenuous efforts were made to obtain a reprieve for
them. Robert Perreau’s wife went in deep mourning, accompanied by her
three children, to sue for pardon on their knees from the Queen. Seventy-
two leading bankers and merchants signed a petition in his favour, which
was presented to the King two days before the execution. But all to no
purpose. Both brothers suffered the extreme penalty at Tyburn on the 17th
January, 1776, before an enormous multitude estimated at 30,000. They
asserted their innocence to the last.
In the following year a clergyman, who had at one time achieved some
eminence, also fell a victim to the vindictive laws regarding forgery. Dr.
Dodd was the son of a clergyman. He had been a wrangler at Cambridge,
and was early known as a litterateur of some repute. While still on his
promotion, and leading a gay life in London, he made a foolish marriage,
and united himself to the daughter of one of Sir John Dolben’s servants, a
young lady largely endowed with personal attractions, but certainly
deficient in birth and fortune. This sobered him, and he took orders in the
year that his ‘Beauties of Shakespeare’ was published. He became a zealous
curate at West Ham; thence he went to St. James’, Garlick Hill, and took an
active part in London church and charitable work. He was one of the
promoters of the Magdalen Hospital, also of the Humane Society, and in
1763, twelve years after ordination, he was appointed chaplain in ordinary
to the King. About the same time he was presented to a prebend’s stall in
Brecon Cathedral, and was recommended to Lord Chesterfield as tutor to
his son. He hoped to succeed to the rectory of West Ham, but being
disappointed he now came to London, and launched out into extravagance.
He had a town house, and a country house at Ealing, and he exchanged his
chariot for a coach. Having won a prize of £1000 in a lottery, he became
interested in two proprietary chapels, but could not make them pay. But just
then he was presented with a living, that of Hockliffe, in Bedfordshire,

which he held with the vicarage of Chalgrove, and his means were still
ample. They were not sufficient, however, for his expenditure, and in an
evil moment he attempted to obtain the valuable cure of St. George’s,
Hanover Square, by back-stair influence. The living was in the gift of the
Crown, and Dodd was so ill advised as to write to a great lady at Court,
offering her £3000 if he were presented. The letter was forthwith passed on
to the Lord Chancellor, and the King, George III., hearing what had
happened, ordered Dr. Dodd’s name to be struck off the list of his chaplains.
The story was made public, and Dodd was satirized in the press and on the
stage.
Dodd was now greatly encumbered by debts, from which the
presentation to a third living, that of Winge, in Buckinghamshire, could not
relieve him. He was in such straits that, according to his biographer, “he
descended so low as to become the editor of a newspaper,” and he tried to
obtain relief in bankruptcy, but failed. At length, so sorely pressed was he
by creditors that he resolved to do a dishonest deed. He forged the name of
his old pupil, now Lord Chesterfield, who had since become his patron, to a
bond for £4200. He applied to certain usurers, in the name of a young
nobleman who was seeking an advance. The business was refused by many,
because Dr. Dodd declared that they could not be present at the execution of
the bond. A Mr. Robertson proved more obliging, and to him Dr. Dodd, in
due course, handed a bond for £4200 executed by Lord Chesterfield, and
witnessed by himself. A second witness being necessary, Mr. Robertson
signed his name beneath Dr. Dodd’s. The bond was no sooner presented for
payment, and referred to Lord Chesterfield, than it was repudiated.
Robertson was forthwith arrested, and soon afterwards Dr. Dodd. The latter
at once, in the hope of saving himself, returned £3000; he gave a cheque
upon his bankers for £700, a bill of sale on his furniture worth £400 more,
and the whole sum was made up by another hundred from the brokers.
Nevertheless Dr. Dodd was taken before the Lord Mayor and charged with
the forgery. Lord Chesterfield would not stir a finger to help his old tutor,
although the poor wretch had made full restitution. Dr. Dodd, when
arraigned, declared that he had no intention to defraud, that he had only
executed the bond as a temporary resource to meet some pressing claims.
The jury after consulting only five minutes found him guilty, and he was
regularly sentenced to death. Still greater exertions were made to obtain a
reprieve for Dr. Dodd than in the case of the Perreaus. The newspapers were

filled with letters pleading for him. All classes of people strove to help him;
the parish officers went in mourning from house to house, asking
subscriptions to get up a petition to the King, and this petition, when
eventually drafted, filled twenty-three skins of parchment. Petitions from
Dodd and his wife, both drawn up by Dr. Johnson, were laid before the
King and Queen. Even the Lord Mayor and Common Council went in a
body to St. James’s Palace to beg mercy from the King. As, however,
clemency had been denied to the Perreaus, it was deemed unadvisable to
extend it to Dr. Dodd.[7] The concourse at his execution, which took place at
Tyburn, was immense. It has been stated erroneously that Dr. Dodd
preached his own funeral sermon. He only delivered an address to his
fellow-prisoners in the prison chapel by the permission of Mr. Villette, the
ordinary. The text he chose was Psalm li. 3, “I acknowledge my faults; and
my sin is ever before me.” It was delivered some three weeks before the
Doctor’s execution, and subsequently printed. It is a curious fact that among
other published works of Dr. Dodd, is a sermon on the injustice of capital
punishments. He was, however, himself the chief witness against a
highwayman, who was hanged for stopping him. Among other spectators at
the execution of Dr. Dodd was the Rev. James Hackman, who afterwards
murdered Miss Reay.[8]
It is said that a scheme was devised to procure Dodd’s escape from
Newgate. He was treated with much consideration by Mr. Akerman,
allowed to have books, papers, and a reading-desk. Food and other
necessaries were brought him from outside by a female servant daily. This
woman was found to bear a striking resemblance to the Doctor, which was
the more marked when she was dressed up in a wig and gown. She was
asked if she would co-operate in a scheme for taking the Doctor’s place in
gaol, and consented. It was arranged that on a certain day, Dr. Dodd’s irons
having been previously filed, he was to change clothes with the woman.
She was to seat herself at the reading-desk while Dr. Dodd, carrying a
bundle under his arm, coolly walked out of the prison. The plan would
probably have succeeded, but Dodd would not be a party to it. He was so
buoyed up with the hope of reprieve that he would not risk the
misconstruction which would have been placed upon the attempt to escape
had it failed. In his own profession Dr. Dodd was not very highly esteemed.
Dr. Newton, Bishop of Bristol, is said to have observed that Dodd deserved
pity, because he was hanged for the least crime he had committed.

One of the most notorious depredators in this line, whose operations
long eluded detection, was Charles Price, commonly called Old Patch. He
forged bank-notes wholesale. His plans were laid with the utmost
astuteness, and he took extraordinary precautions to avoid discovery. He did
everything for himself; made his own paper, with the proper water-mark,
engraved his own plates, and manufactured his own ink. His method of
negotiating the forged notes was most artful. He had three homes; at one he
was Price, properly married, at a second he lived under

Charles Price, alias Old Patch.

another name with a woman who helped him in his schemes, at a third he
did the actual business of passing his notes. This business was always
effected in disguise; none of his agents or instruments saw him except in
disguise, and when his work was over he put it off to return home. One
favourite personation of his was that of an infirm old man, wearing a long
black camlet cloak, with a broad cape fastened up close to his chin. With
this he wore a big, broad-brimmed slouch hat, and often green spectacles or
a green shade. Sometimes his mouth was covered up with red flannel, or his
corpulent legs and gouty feet were swathed in flannel. His natural
appearance as Price was a compact middle-aged man, inclined to stoutness,
erect, active, and not bad-looking, with a beaky nose, keen grey eyes, and a
nutcracker chin. His schemes were very ingenious. On one occasion he
pretended, in one disguise, to expose a swindler (himself in another
disguise), whom a respectable city merchant inveigled into his house in
order to give him up to the police. The swindler proposed to buy himself off

for £500; the offer was accepted, the money paid by a thousand-pound note,
for which the swindler got change. The note, of course, was forged. He
victimized numbers of tradesmen. Disguised as an old man, he passed six
forged fifty-pound notes on a grocer, and then as Price backed up his victim
in an action brought against the bank which refused payment of the
counterfeits. But his cleverest coup was that organized against the lottery
offices. Having in one of his disguises engaged a boy to serve him, he sent
the lad, dressed in livery, round the town to buy lottery tickets, paying for
them in large (forged) notes, for which change was always required. By
these means hundreds and hundreds of pounds were obtained upon the
counterfeits. The boy was presently arrested, and a clever plot was laid to
nab the old man his master, but Price by his vigilance outwitted the police.
Another dodge was to hire boys to take forged notes to the Bank, receive
the tickets from the teller, and carry them back to him (Price). He forthwith
altered the figures, passed them on by the same messenger to the Bank
cashier, and obtained payment for the larger amount.
These wholesale forgeries produced something like consternation at the
Bank. It was supposed that they were executed by a large gang, well
organized and with numerous ramifications, although Price, as I have said,
really worked single-handed. The notes poured in day after day, and still no
clue was obtained as to the culprits. The Bow Street officials were
hopelessly at fault. “Old Patch” was advertised for, described in his various
garbs. It was now discovered that he had a female accomplice. This was a
Mrs. Poultney, alias Hickeringill, his wife’s aunt, a tall, rather genteel
woman of thirty, with a downcast look, thin face and person, light hair, and
pitted with the small-pox. Fate at last unexpectedly overtook Old Patch.
One of many endorsements upon a forged note was traced to a pawnbroker,
who remembered to have had the note from one Powel. The runners
suspected that Powel was Price, and that he was a member of Old Patch’s
gang. A watch was set at the pawnbroker’s, and the next time Powel called
he was arrested, identified as Price, searched, and found to have upon his
person a large number of notes, with a quantity of white tissue-paper, which
he declared he had bought to make into air-balloons for his children. Price
was committed to prison, and a close inquiry made into his antecedents. He
was found to be the man who had decoyed Foote the actor into a
partnership in a brewery, and decamped with the profits, leaving Foote to
pay liabilities to the extent of £500. Then, he had started an illicit still, and

had been arrested and sent to Newgate till he had paid a fine of £1600. He
was released through the intercession of Lord Littleton and Foote, and
forgiven the fine. He next set up as a fraudulent lottery office keeper, and
bolted with a big prize. After this he elaborated his system of forgery, which
ended in the way I have said. Price was alert and cunning to the last. One of
his first acts was to pass out a clandestine letter to Mrs. Poultney, briefly
telling her to “destroy everything.” This she effected by burning the whole
of his disguises in the kitchen fire, on the pretence that the clothes were
infected by the plague. The engraving press was disposed of; the copper
plates heated red hot, then smashed into pieces and thrown with the water-
mark wires on to a neighbouring dust-heap, where they were subsequently
discovered. Price attempted to deny his identity, but to no purpose, and
when he saw the grip of the law tightening upon him, he committed suicide
to avoid the extreme penalty. He was found hanging behind the door of his
cell, suspended from two hat-screws, strengthened by gimlets. Price’s
depredations, it was said, amounted to £200,000; but how he disposed of his
ill-gotten gains, seeing that he always lived obscurely, and neither gambled
nor drank, remained an inscrutable secret to the last.
Two deliberate cases of forging Bank of England notes about this time
may be mentioned, although neither of the criminals passed through
Newgate. One was James Elliot, who suffered at Maidstone in 1777, the
other Joshua Crompton, who was executed at Gangley Green, near
Guildford, in 1778.
The circulation of counterfeit paper was not the only kind of monetary
fraud in vogue. The coinage of the realm still suffered. Clipping could not
be quite put down by act of Parliament. The punishment was still capital,
and generally inflicted without hope of reprieve. It was a crime affected
more particularly by workers in the precious metals. Thus John Clarke, in
1767, was a London watch-case maker of good repute, who was in the habit
of working alone in a private closet. His apprentice, jealously suspecting
him to be engaged in some secret branch of his trade, bored a hole through
the wainscot, and caught his master filing guineas. The apprentice
immediately informed; Clarke was arrested, convicted, and soon afterwards
hanged.
Persons in a higher station, however, succumbed to special temptations.
William Guest was the son of a clergyman living at Worcester, who had
sufficient interest to get him a clerkship in the Bank of England. The

constant handling of piles of gold was too much for Guest’s integrity, and
he presently resolved to turn his opportunities to account. Taking a house in
Broad Street Buildings, he devoted the upper part of it to his nefarious
trade. He abstracted guineas from his drawer in the Bank, carried them
home, filed them, then remilled them in a machine he had designed for the
purpose, and returned them—now light weight—to the Bank. The filings he
converted into ingots and disposed of to the trade. No suspicion of his
malpractices transpiring, he was in due course advanced to the post of teller.
But a fellow-teller having observed him one day picking out new guineas
from a bag, watched him, and found that he did this constantly. On another
occasion he was seen to pay away guineas some of which, on examination,
proved to have been recently filed. They were weighed, and found short
weight. To test Mr. Guest still further, his money-bags were opened one
night after hours, and the contents counted and examined. The number was
short, and several guineas found which appeared to have been recently
filed, and which on weighing proved to be light.
A descent was forthwith made upon Guest’s house, and in the upper
rooms the whole apparatus for filing was laid bare. In a nest of drawers
were found vice, files, the milling machine, two bags of gold filings, and a
hundred guineas. A flap in front of the nest of drawers could be let down,
and inside was a skin fastened to the back of the flap, with a hole in it to
button on to the waistcoat, and equip the workman after the method of
jewellers. More evidence was soon forthcoming against Guest. His fellow-
teller had seen him in possession of a substantial bar of gold; jewellers and
others swore to having bought ingots from him, and an assayer at Guest’s
trial deposed to their being of the same standard as the guinea coinage. His
guilt was clearly made out to the jury, and he was sentenced to death. A
petition signed by a number of influential persons was forwarded to the
Crown, praying for mercy, but it was decided that the law ought to take its
course. As his crime amounted to high treason, he went to Tyburn on a
sledge, but he suffered no other penalty than hanging.
The flagitious trade of coining was in a most flourishing condition
during the last decades of the eighteenth and the early part of the nineteenth
centuries. The condition of the national coinage was at this time far from
creditable to the Mint. A great part of both the silver and copper money in
circulation was much worn and defaced. Imitation thus became much easier
than with coins comparatively fresh and new. Hence the nefarious practice

multiplied exceedingly. There were as many as forty or fifty private mints
constantly at work, either in London or in the principal country towns. The
process was rapid, not too laborious, and extremely profitable. A couple of
hands could turn out in a week base silver coins worth nominally two or
three hundred pounds. The wages of a good workman were as much as a
couple of guineas a day. Much capital was invested by large dealers in the
trade, who must have made enormous sums. One admitted that his
transactions in seven years amounted to the production of £200,000 in
counterfeit half-crowns and other silver coins. So systematic was the traffic,
that orders for town and country were regularly executed by the various
manufacturers. Boxes and parcels of base coin were despatched every
morning by coach and waggon to all parts of the kingdom, like any other
goods. The trade extended to foreign countries.[9] The law, until it was
rectified by the 37 Geo. III. cap. 126, did not punish the counterfeiting of
foreign money, and French louis-d’or, Spanish dollars, German florins, and
Turkish sequins were shipped abroad in great quantities. Our Indian
possessions even did not escape, and a manufactory of spurious gold or
silver pagodas was at one time most active in London, whence they were
exported to the East. The number of persons employed in London as
capitalists and agents for distribution alone amounted to one hundred and
twenty at one time; and besides there was a strong force of skilful
handicraftsmen, backed up by a whole army of “utterers” or “smashers,”
constantly busy in passing the base money into the currency. The latter
comprised hawkers, peddlers, market-women, hackney-coach drivers, all of
whom attended the markets held by the dealers in the manufactured article,
and bought wholesale to distribute retail by various devices, more
particularly in giving change. They obtained the goods at an advantage of
about one hundred per cent. When the base money lost its veneer, the
dealers were ready to repurchase it in gross, and after a repetition of the
treatment, issue it afresh at the old rates.
Gold coins were not so much counterfeited as silver and copper, but
there were bad guineas in circulation. The most dexterous method of
coining them was by mixing a certain amount of alloy with the pure metal.
They were the proper weight, and had some semblance of the true ring, but
their intrinsic value was not more than thirteen or fourteen shillings,
perhaps only eight or nine. The fabrication was, however, limited by the
expense and the nicety required in the process. To counterfeit silver was a

simpler operation. Of base silver money there were five kinds; viz. flats,
plated goods, plain goods, castings, and fig things. The flats were cut out of
prepared flattened plates composed of silver and blanched copper. When cut
out the coins were turned in a lathe, stamped in a press with the proper die,
and subjected to rubbing with various materials, including aquafortis to
bring the silver to the surface, sand-paper, cork, cream of tartar, and last of
all blacking to give the appearance of age. Plated goods were prepared from
copper; the coins cut the proper size and plated, the stamping being done
afterwards. As these coins were most like silver, they generally evaded
detection. Plain goods consisted of copper blanks the size of a shilling,
turned out from a lathe, then given the colour and lustre of metal buttons,
after which they were rubbed with cream of tartar and blacking. Castings,
as the word implies, were coins made of blanched copper, cast in moulds of
the proper die; they were then silvered and treated like the rest. It was very
common to give this class of base money a crooked appearance, by which
means they seemed genuine, and got into circulation without suspicion. The
figs, or fig things, were the lowest and meanest class, and was confined
chiefly to sixpences. Copper counterfeit money was principally of two
kinds, stamped and plain, made out of base metal; the profit on them being
about a hundred per cent. They were mostly halfpennies; but farthings were
also largely manufactured, the material being real copper, but the fraud was
in their being of light weight, and very thin.
The prosecutions for coining were very numerous. The register of the
solicitor to the Mint recorded as many as 650 in a period of seven years.
The offence of making or uttering, till a very recent date, constituted petty
treason, and met with the usual penalties. These, in the case of female
offenders, included hanging and burning at a stake. The last woman who
suffered in this way was burnt before the debtors’ door, in front of Newgate,
in 1788, having been previously strangled. In the following year, as I have
already said, the 30 Geo. III. cap. 48 was passed, which abolished the
practice of burning women convicted of petty treason.[10] Persons guilty of
only selling or dealing in base money were more leniently dealt with. The
offence was long only a misdemeanour, carrying with it a sentence of
imprisonment for a year and a day, which the culprit passed not
unpleasantly in Newgate, while his friends or relations kept the business
going outside, and supplied him regularly with ample funds.

There was as yet little security for life and property in town or country.
The streets of London were still unsafe; high roads and bye roads leading to
it were still infested by highway robbers. The protection afforded to the
public by the police continued very inefficient. It was still limited to
parochial effort; the watchmen were appointed by the vestries, and received
a bare pittance,—twelve and sixpence a week in summer, seventeen and
sixpence in winter,—which they often eked out by taking bribes from the
women of the town, or by a share in a burglar’s “swag,” to whose doings
they were conveniently blind. These watchmen were generally middle-aged,
often old and feeble men, who were appointed either from charitable
motives, to give them employment, or save them from being inmates of the
workhouse and a burthen to the parish. Their hours of duty were long, from
night-fall to sunrise, during which, when so disposed, they patrolled the
streets, calling the hour, the only check on their vigilance being the
occasional rounds of the parish beadle, who visited the watchmen on their
various beats. In spite of this the watchmen were often invisible; not to be
found when most wanted, and even when present, powerless to arrest or
make head against disorderly or evilly-disposed persons.
Besides the watchmen there were the parish constables, nominated by
the court of burgesses, or court leet. The obligation of serving in the office
of constable might fall upon any householder in turn, but he was at liberty
to escape it by buying a substitute or purchasing a “Tyburn ticket,” of which
more directly. The parish constables were concerned with pursuit rather
than prevention, with crime after rather than before the fact. In this duty
they were assisted by the police constables, although there was no love lost
between the two classes of officer. The police constables are most familiar
to us under the name of “Bow Street runners,” but they were attached to all
the police offices, and not to Bow Street alone. They were nominated from
Whitehall by the Secretary of State, the minister now best known as the
Home Secretary. The duties of the “runners” were mainly those of detection
and pursuit, in which they were engaged in London and in the country, at
home and abroad. Individuals or public bodies applied to Bow Street, or
some other office, for the services of a runner. These officers took charge of
poaching cases, of murders, burglaries, or highway robberies. Some were
constantly on duty at the Court, as depredations were frequently committed
in the royal palaces, or the royal family were “teased by lunatics.” The
runners were remunerated by a regular salary of a guinea a week; but

special services might be recognized by a share in the private reward
offered, or, in case of conviction, by a portion of the public parliamentary
reward of £40, which might be granted by the bench.[11]
The policy of making these grants was considered questionable. It
tended to tempt officers of justice “to forswear themselves for the lucre of
the reward,” and the thirst for “blood-money,” as it was called, was
aggravated till it led many to sell the lives of their fellow-creatures for gain.
There were numerous cases of this. Jonathan Wild was one of the most
notorious of the dishonest thief-takers. In 1755 several scoundrels of the
same kidney were convicted of having obtained the conviction of innocent
people, simply to pocket the reward. Their offence did not give under penal
statute, so they were merely exposed in the pillory, where, however, the
mob pelted one to death and nearly killed another. Again, in 1816, a police
officer named Vaughan was guilty of inciting to crime, in order to betray his
victims and receive the blood-money. On the other hand, when conviction
was doubtful the offender enjoyed long immunity from arrest. Officers
would not arrest him until he “weighed his weight,” as the saying was, or
until they were certain of securing the £40 reward. Another form of
remuneration was the bestowal on conviction of a “Tyburn ticket”; in other
words, of an exemption from service in parish offices. This the officer sold
for what it would fetch, the price varying in different parishes from £12 or
£14 to £30 or £40.
It was not to be wondered at that a weak and inadequate police force,
backed up by such uncertain and injudicious incentives to activity, should
generally come off second-best in its struggles with the hydra-headed
criminality of the day. Robberies and burglaries were committed almost
under the eyes of the police. It was calculated that the value of the property
stolen in the city in one month (circa 1808) amounted to £15,000, and none
of the parties were even known or apprehended, although sought after night
and day.[12] Such cases as the following were of frequent occurrence.
“Seven ruffians, about eight o’clock at night, knocked at the door of Mrs.
Abercrombie in Charlotte Street, Rathbone Place, calling out ‘Post!’ and on
its being opened, rushed in and took from Mrs. A. her jewels and fifty or
sixty guineas in money, with all the clothes and linen they could get. The
neighbourhood was alarmed, and a great crowd assembled, but the robbers
sallied forth, and with swords drawn and pistols presented, threatened
destruction to any who opposed them. The mob tamely suffered them to

escape with their booty without making any resistance.” The officers of
justice were openly defied. There were streets, such as Duck Lane, Gravel
Lane, or Cock Lane, in which it was unsafe for any one to venture without
an escort of five or six of his fellows. “They (the ruffians) would have cut
him to pieces if he was alone.”
Still more dastardly were the wanton outrages perpetrated upon
unprotected females, often in broad daylight, and in the public streets.
These at one time increased to an alarming extent. Ladies were attacked and
wounded without warning, and apparently without cause. The injuries were
often most serious. On one occasion a young lady was stabbed in the face
by means of an instrument concealed in a bouquet of flowers which a
ruffian had begged her to smell. When consternation was greatest, however,
it was reported that the cowardly assailant was in custody. He proved to be
one Renwick Williams, now generally remembered as “the monster.” The
assault for which he was arrested was made in St. James’s Street, about
midnight, upon a young lady, Miss Porter, who was returning from a ball to
her father’s house. Renwick struck at her with a knife, and wounded her
badly through her clothes, accompanying the blow with the grossest
language. The villain at the time escaped, but Miss Porter recognized him
six months later in St. James’s Park. He was followed by a Mr. Coleman to
his quarters at No. 52, Jermyn Street, and brought to Miss Porter’s house.
The young lady, crying “That is the wretch!” fainted away at the sight of
him. The prisoner indignantly repudiated that he was “the monster” who
was advertised for, but he was indicted at the Old Bailey, and the jury found
him guilty without hesitation. His sentence was two years’ imprisonment in
Newgate, and he was bound over in £400 to be of good behaviour.
Gentlemen, some of the highest station, going or returning from court,
were often the victims of the depredations committed in the royal precincts.
In 1792 a gang of thieves dressed in court suits smuggled themselves into a
drawing-room of St. James’s Palace, and tried to hustle and rob the Prince
of Wales. The Duke of Beaufort, returning from a levee, had his “George,”
pendant to his ribbon of the Garter, stolen from him in the yard of St.
James’s Palace. The order was set with brilliants, worth a very large sum of
money. The duke called out to his servants, who came up and seized a
gentlemanly man dressed in black standing near. The “George” was found
in this gentleman’s pocket. He proved to be one Henry Sterne, commonly
called Gentleman Harry,[13] who, being of good address and genteel

appearance, easily got admission to the best company, upon whom he levied
his contributions.
George Barrington, the notorious pickpocket, also found it to his
advantage to attend levees and drawing-rooms. Barrington, or Waldron,
which was his real name, began crime early. When one of a strolling
company in Ireland, he recruited the empty theatrical treasury and
supplemented meagre receipts by stealing watches and purses, the proceeds
being divided among the rest of the actors. He found thieving so much more
profitable than acting that he abandoned the latter in favour of the former
profession, and set up as a gentleman pickpocket. Having worked Dublin
well, his native land became too hot to hold him, and came to London. At
Ranelagh one night he relieved both the Duke of Leinster and Sir William
Draper of considerable sums. He visited also the principal watering places,
including Bath, but London was his favourite hunting-ground. Disguised as
a clergyman, he went to court on drawing-room days, and picked pockets or
removed stars and decorations from the breasts of their wearers. At Covent
Garden Theatre one night he stole a gold snuff-box set with brilliants, and
worth £30,000, belonging to Prince Orloff, of which there had been much
talk, and which, with other celebrated jewels, Barrington had long coveted.
The Russian prince felt the thief’s hand in his pocket, and immediately
seized Barrington by the throat, on which the latter slipped back the snuff-
box. But Barrington was arrested and committed for trial, escaping this time
because Prince Orloff would not prosecute. He was, however, again arrested
for picking a pocket in Drury Lane Theatre, and sentenced to three years’
hard labour on board the hulks in the Thames.
From this he was released prematurely through the good offices of a
gentleman who pitied him, only to be reimprisoned, but in Newgate, not the
hulks, for fresh robberies at the Opera House, Pantheon, and other places of
public resort. Once more released, he betook himself to his old evil courses,
and having narrowly escaped capture in London, wandered through the
northern counties in various disguises, till he was at length taken at
Newcastle-on-Tyne. Another narrow escape followed, through the absence
of a material witness; but he was finally arrested for picking a pocket on
Epsom Downs, and sentenced to seven years’ transportation. He made an
affecting speech at his trial, urging, in extenuation of his offence, that he
had never had a fair chance of earning an honest livelihood. He may have
been sincere, and he certainly took the first opportunity of trying to do well.

On the voyage out to New South Wales there was a mutiny on board the
convict ship, which would have been successful but for Barrington’s aid on
the side of authority. He kept the passage to the quarter-deck single-handed,
and the mob of convicts at bay with a marline-spike, till the captain and
crew were able to get arms and make head against the revolt. As a reward
for his conduct, Barrington was appointed to a position of trust, in charge of
other prisoners at Paramatta. Within a year or two he was advanced to the
more onerous and responsible post of chief constable, and was
complimented by the governor of the colony for his faithful performance of
the duty. He fell away in health, however, and retiring eventually upon a
small pension, died before he was fifty years of age.
The gentlemen of the highway continued to harass and rob all travellers.
All the roads were infested. Two or three would be heard of every morning;
some on Hounslow Heath, some on Finchley Common, some on
Wimbledon Common, some on the Romford Road. Townshend, the Bow
Street runner, declared that on arriving at the office of a morning people
came in one after the other to give information of such robberies. “Messrs.
Mellish, Bosanquet, and Pole, merchants of the city,” says a contemporary
chronicle, “were stopped by three highwaymen on Hounslow Heath. After
robbing them, without resistance, of their money and their watches, one of
the robbers wantonly fired into the chaise and mortally wounded Mr.
Mellish.” The first successful effort made to put down this levying of
blackmail upon the king’s highway was the establishment of the police
horse patrol in 1805. It was organized by the direction of the chief
magistrate at Bow Street, then Sir Nathaniel Conant, and under the
immediate orders of a conductor, Mr. Day. This force consisted of mounted
constables, who every night regularly patrolled all the roads leading into the
metropolis. They worked singly between two stations, each starting at a
fixed time from each end, halting midway to communicate, then returning.
The patrol acted on any information received en route, making themselves
known as they rode along to all persons riding horses or in carriages, by
calling out in a loud tone “Bow Street Patrol.” They arrested all known
offenders whom they met with,

and were fully armed for their own and the public protection. The members
of this excellent force were paid eight-and-twenty shillings a week, with
turnpike tolls and forage for their horses, which, however, they were
obliged to groom and take care of. Marked and immediate results obtained
from the establishment of this patrol. Highway robbery ceased almost
entirely, and in the rare cases which occurred before it quite died out, the
guilty parties were invariably apprehended.
There was as yet no very marked diminution in the number of
executions, but other forms of punishment were growing into favour.
Already transportation beyond the seas had grown into a system. Since the
settlement of New South Wales as a penal colony in 1780, convicts were
sent out regularly, and in increasingly large batches. The period between
conviction and embarkation was spent in Newgate, thus adding largely to its
criminal population, with disastrous consequences to the health and
convenience of the place. Besides these, the most heinous criminals, there
were other lesser offenders, for whom various terms of imprisonment was
deemed a proper and sufficient penalty. Hence gaols were growing much
more crowded, Newgate more especially, as I shall presently show. For the
present I propose to give the reader some of the types of persons who
became lodgers in Newgate, not temporarily, as in the case of all who
passed quickly from the condemned cells to the gallows, but who remained

there for longer periods, whether awaiting removal as transports, or
working out a sentence of imprisonment in the course of law.
As London, increased in size and life, became more complex, chances
multiplied for rogues and sharpers, who tried with chicane and stratagem to
prey upon society. Swindling was carried out more systematically and upon
a wider scale than in the days of Jenny Diver or the sham German Princess.
[14] A woman named Robinson was arrested in 1801, who, under the
pretence of being a rich heiress, had obtained goods fraudulently from
tradesmen to the value of £20,000. Again, some years later, a gang
resembling somewhat the “long firms” of modern days carried on a
fictitious trade, and obtained goods from city merchants worth £50,000.
There were many varieties of the professional swindler in those days. Some
did business under the guise of licensed and outwardly respectable
pawnbrokers, who sub rosâ were traffickers in stolen goods. Others roamed
the country as hawkers, general dealers, and peddlers, distributing
exciseable articles which had been smuggled into the country, carrying on
fraudulent raffles, purchasing stolen horses in one county and disposing of
them in another. The “duffer” went from door to door in the town, offering
for sale smuggled tobacco, muslins, or other stuffs, and, if occasion served,
passing forged notes or bad money as small change.
Where the swindler possessed such qualifications as a pleasing manner
and a gentlemanly address, with a small capital to start with, he flew at
higher game. Alexander Day, alias Marmaduke Davenport, Esq., was one of
the first of a long line of impostors who made a great show, in a fine house
in a fashionable neighbourhood, with sham footmen in smart liveries, and a
grand carriage and pair. The latter he got in on approval, taking care while
he used them to be driven to the Duke of Montague’s and other aristocratic
mansions. In the carriage too he called on numbers of tradesmen and gave
large orders for goods: yards of Spanish point-lace, a gold “equipage” or
dinner-service, silks in long pieces, table and other linen enough to furnish
several houses. By clever excuses he postponed payment, or made off with
the property by a second door. Among other things ordered was a gold
chain for his squirrel, which already wore a silver one. The goldsmith
recognized the silver chain as one he had recently sold to a lady, and his
suspicions were aroused. On reference to her she denounced Day as a
swindler, who had cheated her out of a large sum of money. Day was
forthwith arrested and sent to Newgate. At his trial he declared that he

meant to pay for everything he had ordered, that he owned an estate in
Durham worth £1200 a year, but that it was heavily mortgaged. The case
occupied some time, but in the end Day was sentenced to two years’
imprisonment in Newgate, to stand twice in the pillory, find security for his
good behaviour, and pay a fine of £200.
The cleverest swindles were often effected by the softer sex. Female
sharpers infested all places of public resort. They dressed in the best
clothes, and personating ladies of the highest fashion, attended
entertainments and masquerades; they even succeeded in gaining admission
to St. James’s Palace, where they got into the general circle and pilfered
right and left. One woman, the wife of a notorious Chevalier d’Industrie,
was known to have been at court at the King’s birthday (George III.). Her
costume was in irreproachable good taste; her husband attended her in the
garb of a dignitary of the Church. Between them they managed to levy
contributions to the extent of £1700, and made off before these thefts were
discovered or suspected. A notable female sharper was Elizabeth Harriet
Grieve, whose line of business was to pretend that she possessed great
influence at court, and promise preferment. She gave out that she was
highly connected: Lord North was her first cousin, the Duke of Grafton her
second; she was nearly related to Lady Fitz-Roy, and most intimate with
Lord Guildford and other peers. In those days places were shamelessly
bought and sold, and tradesmen retiring from business, or others who had
amassed a little property, invested their savings in a situation under the
Crown. When the law at length laid hands on the Hon. Elizabeth Harriet, as
she styled herself, a great number of cases were brought against her. A
coach-carver, whose trade was declining, had paid her £36 to obtain him a
place as clerk in the Victualling Office. Another man gave her £30 down,
with a conditional bond for £250, to get the place of a “coast” or “tide”-
waiter. Both were defrauded. There were many more proved against her,
and she was eventually sentenced to transportation.
She was only one of many who followed the same trade. David James
Dignum was convicted in 1777 of pretending to sell places under
Government, and sentenced to hard labour on the Thames. Dignum’s was a
barefaced kind of imposition. He went the length of handing his victims, in
exchange for the fees, which were never less than a hundred guineas, a
stamped parchment duly signed by the head of the public department, with
seals properly attached. In one case he got £1000 for pretending to secure a

person the office of “writer of the ‘London Gazette.’ ” Of course the
signatures to these instruments were forged, and the seals had been removed
from some legal warrant. When the time came for Dignum’s departure for
the hulks, he resolved to go to Woolwich in state, and travelled down in a
post-chaise, accompanied by his negro servant. But on reaching the ballast
lighter on which Dignum was to work, his valet was refused admittance,
and the convict was at once “put to the duty of the wheelbarrow.” He made
a desperate effort to get off by forging a cheque on Drummonds, which he
got others to cash. They were arrested, but their innocence was clearly
shown. Dignum had hoped to be brought up to London for examination. He
had thought to change his lot, to exchange the hulks for Newgate, even at
the risk of winding up at Tyburn. But in this he was foiled, as the authorities
thought it best to institute no prosecution, but leave him to work out his
time at the hulks.
That the dishonest and evilly-disposed should thus try to turn the
malversation of public patronage to their own advantage was not strange.
The traffic in places long flourished unchecked in a corrupt age, and almost
under the very eyes of careless, not to say culpable, administrators. The evil
practice culminated in the now nearly forgotten case of Mrs. Mary Ann
Clarke, who undoubtedly profited liberally by her pernicious influence over
the Duke of York when commander-in-chief of the army. The scandal was
brought prominently before the public by Colonel Wardle, M.P., who
charged her with carrying on a traffic in military commissions, not only
with the knowledge, but the participation, of the Duke of York. A long
inquiry followed, at which extraordinary disclosures were made. Mrs.
Clarke was proved to have disposed of both military and ecclesiastical
patronage. She gave her own footman a pair of colours, and procured for an
Irish clergyman the honour of preaching before the King. Her brokership
extended to any department of state, and her lists of applicants included
numbers of persons in the best classes of society. The Duke of York was
exonerated from the charge of deriving any pecuniary benefit from this
disgraceful traffic; but it was clear that he was cognizant of Mrs. Clarke’s
proceedings, and that he knowingly permitted her to barter his patronage for
filthy lucre. Mrs. Clarke was examined in person at the bar of the house. In
the end a vote acquitted the duke of personal corruption, and the matter was
allowed to drop. But a little later Colonel Wardle was sued by an
upholsterer for furniture supplied at his order to Mrs. Clarke, and the

disinterestedness of the colonel’s exposure began to be questioned. In 1814
Mrs. Clarke was sentenced to nine months’ imprisonment for a libel on the
Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer.
A clever scheme of deception which went very near success was that
perpetrated by Robert Jaques. Jaques filled the post of “clerk of the papers”
to the warden of the Fleet, a place which he had himself solicited, on the
plea that he was a man of experience, able to guard the warden against the
tricks incident to his trust. Jaques admitted that his own antecedents were
none of the best, that he had been frequently in gaol, but he pleaded that
“men like himself, who had been guilty of the worst offences, had
afterwards become the best officers.” No sooner was Jaques appointed than
he began to mature a plot against his employer. The warden of the Fleet by
his office became responsible for the debt of any prisoner in his custody
who might escape. Jaques at once cast about for some one whom he might
through a third party cause to be arrested, brought to the Fleet on a sham
action, and whom he would assist to escape. The third party’s business
would then be to sue the warden for the amount of the evaded debt. Jaques
applied to a friend, Mr. Tronson, who had been a servant, an apothecary, a
perfumer, and a quack doctor. Tronson found him one Shanley, a needy
Irishman, short of stature and of fair complexion, altogether a person who
might well be disguised as a woman. Jaques next arranged that a friend
should get a warrant against Shanley for £450. Upon this, Shanley, who was
easily found, being a “dressy young gentleman, fond of blue and gold,” was
arrested and carried to a spunging-house. While there a second writ was
served upon Shanley for £850, at the suit of another friend of Jaques.
Shanley was next transferred to the Fleet on a Habeas, applied for by a
fictitious attorney. The very next Sunday, Jaques gave a dinner-party, at
which his wife, a brother, Mr. John Jaques, and his wife, with some of the
parties to the suits, and of course Shanley, were present. Later in the day
Shanley exchanged clothes with Mrs. John Jaques, and, personating her,
walked out of the prison. It was at a time when an under turnkey was on
duty at the gate, and he let the disguised prisoner pass without question. By-
and-by Mrs. Jaques got back her clothes, and also left. Shanley had
meanwhile proceeded post haste to Dover, and so reached the continent.
As soon as the escape was discovered, suspicion fell on Jaques’s friends,
who were openly taxed with connivance. The matter looked worse for them
when they laid claim to the money considered forfeited by the

disappearance of the debtor, and the law stepped in to prosecute inquiry.
The head turnkey, tracking Shanley to Calais, went in pursuit. At the same
time a correspondence which was in progress between the conspirators on
either side of the Channel was intercepted by order of the Secretary of
State, and the letters handed over to the warden’s solicitors. From these the
whole plot was discovered, and the guilt of the parties rendered the more
sure by the confession of Shanley. Jaques was arrested, tried, and convicted
at the Old Bailey, receiving the sentence of three years’ imprisonment, with
one public exposure on the pillory at the Royal Exchange. A curious
accident, however, helped to obtain the premature release of Jaques from
Newgate. A Sir James Saunderson having been robbed of a large sum in
cash and notes, portion of the stolen property was brought into Newgate by
some of the thieves, who were arrested on another charge. The notes were
intrusted to Jaques, who pretended he could raise money on them. Instead
of this, he gave immediate notice to their rightful owner that he had them in
his possession. Jaques afterwards petitioned Sir James Saunderson to
interest himself in his behalf, and through this gentleman’s good offices he
escaped the exposure upon the pillory, and was eventually pardoned.
A peculiar feature in the criminal records of the early part of the present
century was the general increase in juvenile depravity. This was remarked
and commented upon by all concerned in the administration of justice:
magistrates of all categories, police officers, gaolers, and philanthropists. It
was borne out, moreover, by the statistics of the times. There were in the
various London prisons, in the year 1816, three thousand inmates under
twenty years of age. Nearly half of this number were under seventeen, and a
thousand of these alone were convicted of felony. Many of those sent to
prison were indeed of tender years. Some were barely nine or ten. Children
began to steal when they could scarcely crawl. Cases were known of infants
of barely six charged in the courts with crimes. This deplorable depravity
was attributable to various causes: to the profligacy prevailing in the parish
schools; the cruel and culpable neglect of parents who deserted their
offspring, leaving them in a state of utter destitution, or were guilty of the
no less disgraceful wickedness of using them as instruments for their
nefarious designs; the artfulness of astute villains—prototypes of old Fagin
—who trained the youthful idea in their own devious ways. The last-named
was a fruitful source of juvenile crime. Children were long permitted to
commit small thefts with impunity. The offence would have been death to

those who used them as catspaws; for them capital punishment was
humanely nearly impossible; moreover, the police officers ignored them till
they “weighed their weight,” or had been guilty of a forty-pound crime.[15]
The education in iniquity continued steadily. They went from bad to worse,
and ere long became regular inmates of “flash houses,” where both sexes
mixed freely with vicious companions of their own age, and the most daring
enjoyed the hero-worship of their fellows. When thus assembled, they
formed themselves into distinct parties or gangs, each choosing one of their
number as captain, and dividing themselves into reliefs to work certain
districts, one by day and by night. When they had “collared their swag,”
they returned to divide their plunder, having gained sometimes as much as
three or four hundred pounds. A list of these horrible dens prepared about
this date showed that there were two hundred of them, frequented by six
thousand boys and girls, who lived solely by this way, or were the
associates of thieves. These haunts were situated in St. Giles, Drury Lane,
Chick Lane, Saffron Hill, the Borough, and Ratcliffe Highway. Others that
were out of luck crowded the booths of Covent Garden, where all slept
promiscuously amongst the rotting garbage of the stalls. During the daytime
all were either actively engaged in thieving, or were revelling in low
amusements. Gambling was a passion with them, indulged in without let or
hindrance in the open streets; and from tossing buttons there they passed on
to playing in the low publics at such games as “put,” or “the rocks of
Scylla,” “bumble puppy,” “tumble tumble,” or “nine holes.”
Still more demoralizing than the foregoing was the pernicious habit,
commonly, but happily not invariably followed, of committing these young
thieves to Newgate. Here these tyros were at once associated with the
veterans and great leaders in crime. Old house-breakers expatiated upon
their own deeds, and found eager and willing pupils among their youthful
listeners. The elder and more evilly experienced boys soon debased and
corrupted their juniors. One with twenty previous convictions against him,
who had been in Newgate as often, would have alongside him an infant of
seven or eight, sent to gaol for the first time for stealing a hearth-broom. It
was as bad or worse for the females. Girls of twelve or thirteen were mixed
up with the full-grown felons; one of the latter, as in a known case, who
was what we should style in these days an habitual criminal, and who had
been committed thirty times to Newgate, residing there generally nine

months out of every twelve, was the wardswoman or prisoner-officer, with
nearly unlimited power.
The crying evils of the system had moved private philanthropy to do
something in remedy. Charitable schools, the forerunners of our modern
reformatories, or the germ and nucleus of time-honoured institutions still
flourishing, and worthy all praise, were started. I shall refer to these more
particularly in a later chapter.[16] Other well-meaning people, each with
their own pet scheme, began to theorize and propose the construction of
juvenile penitentiaries, economical imitations mostly of the great
penitentiary which was nearly completed at Millbank. But juvenile crime
still grew and flourished, the offences were as numerous as ever, and their
character was mostly the same. The most favourite pastime was that of
picking pockets. Boys then as now were especially skilful at this in a
crowd; short, active little chaps, they slipped through quickly with their
booty, and passed it on to the master who was directing the operations.
Shop-lifting, again, was much practised, the dodge being to creep along on
hands and feet to the shop fronts of haberdashers and linen-drapers, and
snatch what they could. Again, there were clever young thieves who could
“starr” a pane in a window, and so get their hands through the glass. But
there were boys convicted of highway robbery, like Joseph Wood and
Thomas Underwood, one fourteen and the other twelve, both of whom were
hanged. Another boy, barely sixteen, was executed for setting his master’s
house on fire. The young incendiary was pot-boy at a public-house, and
having been reprimanded for neglect, vowed revenge. Another boy was
condemned for forming one of a gang of boys and girls in a street robbery,
who fell upon a man in liquor. The girls attacked him, and the boys stripped
him of all he had.
Perhaps the most astounding precocity in crime was that displayed by a
boy named Leary, who was tried and sentenced to death at thirteen years of
age for stealing a watch and chain from some chambers in the Temple. He
began at the early age of eight, and progressed regularly from stealing
apples to burglary and household robbery. He learnt the trade first from a
companion at school. After exacting toll from the tart-shops, he took to
stealing bakers’ loaves, then money from shop counters and tills, or
breaking shop windows and drawing their contents through. He often
appeared at school with several pounds in his pocket, the proceeds of his
depredations. He soon became captain of a gang known as Leary’s gang,

who drove about, armed with pistols, in a cart, watching for carriages with
the trunks fastened outside, which they could cut away. In these excursions
the gang was often out for a week or more, Leary’s share of the profits
amounting sometimes to £100. Once, the result of several robberies in and
about London, he amassed some £350, but the money was partly stolen
from him by older thieves, or he squandered it in gambling, or in the flash
houses. After committing innumerable depredations, he was captured in a
gentleman’s dining-room in the act of abstracting a quantity of plate. He
was found guilty, but out of compassion committed to the Philanthropic
School. He was recaptured, however, and eventually sentenced to
transportation for life.
The prevailing tastes of the populace were in these times low and
depraved. Their amusements were brutal, their manners and customs
disreputable, their morality at the lowest ebb. It is actually on record that
little more than a hundred years ago a man and his wife were convicted of
offering their niece, “a fine young girl, apparently fourteen years of age,”
for sale

WHIPPING AT THE OLD BAILEY.

at the Royal Exchange. Mr. and Mrs. Crouch were residents of Bodmin,
Cornwall, to which remote spot came a report that “maidens were very
scarce in London, and that they sold there for a good price.” They
accordingly travelled up to town by road, two hundred and thirty-two miles,
and on arrival hawked the poor girl about the streets. At length they
“accosted an honest captain of a ship, who instantly made known the base
proposal they had made to him.” The Crouches were arrested and tried; the
man was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment in Newgate, but his wife,
as having acted under his influence, was acquitted.
Traffic in dead bodies was more actively prosecuted. The wretches who
gained the name of Resurrection men despoiled graveyards to purvey
subjects for the dissecting knife. There were dealers who traded openly in
these terrible goods, and, as has been seen in the chapter on executions,
their agents haggled for corpses at the foot of the gallows. Sometimes the
culprits were themselves the guardians of the sacred precincts. I find that
the grave-digger of St. George’s, Bloomsbury, was convicted, with a female
accomplice, of stealing a dead body, and sentenced to imprisonment. They

were also “whipped twice on their bare backs from the end of King’s Gate
Street, Holborn, to Dyot Street, St. Giles, being half a mile.” To this crime,
and its development in the persons of Burke and Hare, I shall recur on a
later page.
Disorderly gatherings for the prosecution of the popular sports were of
constant occurrence. The vice of gambling was openly practised in the
streets. It was also greatly fostered by the metropolitan fairs, of which there
were eighty annually, lasting from Easter to September, when Bartholomew
Fair was held. These fairs were the resort of the idle and the profligate, and
most of the desperate characters in London were included in the crowd.
Another favourite amusement was bull-baiting or bullock-hunting. Sunday
morning was generally chosen for this pastime. A subscription was made to
pay the hire of an animal from some drover or butcher, which was forthwith
driven through the most populous parts of the town; often across church-
yards when divine service was in progress, pursued by a yelling mob, who
goaded the poor brute to madness with sharp pointed sticks, or thrust peas
into its ears. When nearly dead the poor beast rejoined its herd, and was
driven on to Smithfield market. A system of bull-baits was introduced at
Westminster by two notorious characters known as Caleb Baldwin and
Hubbersfield, otherwise Slender Billy, which attracted great crowds, and
led to drunkenness and scenes of great disorder.
Towards the close of the eighteenth century a still lower and more
debasing amusement sprang suddenly into widespread popularity. The
patronage of pugilism or prize-fighting was no doubt supposed by many to
be the glorification of the national virtues of courage and endurance. It was
also greatly due to the gradual disuse of the practice of carrying side-arms,
when it was thought that quarrels would be fought out with fists instead of
swords. Hence the “noble art of self-defence,” as it was styled
magniloquently, found supporters in every class of society. Prize-fights first
became fashionable about 1788, following a great encounter between two
noted pugilists, named Richard Humphreys and Daniel Mendoza, a Jew.
Sporting papers were filled with accounts of the various fights, which peer
and pickpocket attended side by side, and which even a Royal Prince did
not disdain to honour. These professional bruisers owned many noble
patrons. Besides, the Prince of Wales, the Dukes of Clarence and York, the
Duke of Hamilton, Lords Barrymore and others, attended prize-fights and
sparring matches at theatres and public places. A well-known pugilist, who

was summoned for an assault at Covent Garden Theatre, brought forward in
his defence the terms of intimacy he was on with noted people; the very day
on which he was charged, that he had dined at the Piazza Coffee House
with General Gwynne, Colonel McDouel, Captains Barkley and Hanbury,
after which they had all gone to the theatre. These aristocratic friends were,
moreover, ready to be useful at a pinch, and would bail out a pugilist in
trouble, or give him their countenance and support. At the trial of one
William Ward, who had killed a man in a fight, the pugilist was attended by
his patrons in court. The case was a bad one. Ward, on his way to see a fight
in the country, had been challenged by a drunken blacksmith, and proved to
him after a few rounds that he was no match for the trained bruiser. The
blacksmith did not like his “punishment,” and tried to escape into the bar,
when his antagonist followed him, and actually beat him to death. At the
trial Ward was found guilty of manslaughter, fined one shilling, and only
sentenced to be imprisoned three months in Newgate. Yet the judge who
inflicted this light punishment condemned boxing as an inhuman and
disgraceful practice, a disgrace to any civilized nation.
To the foregoing categories of undoubted criminals must be added
another pretty numerous class of offenders, who were at least so deemed by
contemporary codes, and who now frequently found themselves relegated
to Newgate. These were days when the press had far from achieved its
present independence; when writers, chafing under restraints and reckless
of consequence, were tempted into licence from sheer bravado and
opposition; when others far more innocent were brought under the same ban
of the law, and suffered imprisonment and fine for a hardly unwarrantable
freedom of speech. It is to be feared that the frequent prosecutions instituted
had often their origin in political antipathy. While ministerial prints might
libel and revile the opponents of the governments, journals which did not
spare the party in power were humiliated and brow-beaten, difficulties were
thrown in the way of their obtaining intelligence, and if they dared to
express their opinions freely, “an information ex officio,” as it was styled,
was issued by the Attorney-General. Prosecution followed, protracted to the
bitter end. Even what seems to us the harmless practice of parliamentary
reporting was deemed a breach of privilege; it was tolerated, but never
expressly permitted. Offending journalists were often reprimanded at the
bar of the House, and any member who felt aggrieved at the language
attributed to him was at liberty to claim the protection of the House. When

legislators and executive were so sensitive, it was hardly likely that the
great ones, the supposed salt of the earth, should be less thin-skinned. Any
kind of criticism upon princes of the blood was looked upon as rank
blasphemy; the morals of a not blameless or too reputable aristocracy were
guaranteed immunity from attack, while the ecclesiastical hierarchy was
apparently not strong enough to vindicate its tenets or position without
having recourse to the secular arm.
As time passed, the early martyrs to freedom of speech, such men as
Prynne Bastwick and Daniel Defoe, were followed by many victims to
similar oppression. One of the first to suffer after Defoe was the nonjuring
clergyman Lawrence Howell, who died in Newgate. He was prosecuted
about 1720 for writing a pamphlet in which he denounced George I. as a
usurper. He was tried at the Old Bailey, convicted, and sentenced to pay a
fine of £500 to the king, to find sureties for an additional sum, to be
imprisoned in Newgate for three years, and during that term to be twice
whipped. He was also to be degraded and stripped of his gown by the
common executioner. Howell asked indignantly of his judges, “Who will
whip a clergyman?” “We pay no deference to your cloth,” replied the court,
“because you are a disgrace to it, and have no right to wear it.” The validity
of his ordination was also denied by the court, and as Howell continued to
protest, the hangman was ordered to tear off his gown as he stood there at
the bar. The public whipping was not inflicted, but Howell died soon
afterwards in Newgate.
Next came Nathaniel Mist, who was sentenced in 1721 to stand in the
pillory, to pay a fine, and suffer imprisonment for reflecting upon the action
of George I. as regards the Protestants in the Palatinate. His paper, the
‘Weekly Journal’ or ‘Saturday’s Post,’ was notoriously Jacobite in its views.
Soon afterwards he came under the displeasure of the House of Commons
for instituting comparisons between the times of the ’15 rebellion and those
which followed, and was committed to Newgate for uttering a “false,
malicious, and scandalous libel.” This interference by the House with Mist’s
publications in a matter which did not concern its privileges is characterized
by Hallam as an extraordinary assumption of parliamentary power. Tom
Paine, whose rationalist writings gained him much obloquy later on, was
one of the next in point of time to feel the arm of the law. In 1724 he was
convicted of three libels on the Government, fined £100, and imprisoned for
a year. A clergyman, William Rowland, was put in the pillory in 1729 for

commenting too freely in print on two magistrates who had failed to convict
and punish prisoners charged with unnatural crimes. Mr. Rowland was
pilloried in his canonical habit, and preached all the time to the multitude,
complaining of the injustice of his sentence, “whereupon the people, and
amongst them were several women, made a collection for him.”
About 1730, newspapers were especially established for purposes of
political party warfare, and each side libelled or prosecuted the other in
turn. The ‘Craftsman’ about this date sprang into the first rank for wit and
invective. Its editors were constantly in trouble; the statesmen who
supported it had to defend their bantling with their swords. In 1738 the
printer, Henry Haines, was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment for
producing the paper. In 1759 Dr. Shebbeare was fined, put in the pillory,
and imprisoned for three years, his offence being the publication of what
was deemed a scandalous libel in his ‘Sixth Letter to the English People.’
Four years later, John Wilkes, M.P., started the ‘North Briton,’ a Liberal
print, in opposition to Smollet’s ‘Briton,’ a Tory paper, which was
subsidized and supported by Lord Bute, then in power. John Wilkes was no
doubt assisted by Lord Temple and John Churchill the satirist. The ‘North
Briton’ had been intended to assail Lord Bute’s government, but it was not
until its forty-fifth number that the dash and boldness of its contributors
attracted general attention. In this number a writer rashly accused the king
of falsehood.[17] The matter was at once taken up; proceedings were
instituted against printer and publisher, who were arrested, as was also
Wilkes. These arrests subsequently formed the subject of lengthy lawsuits;
they were in the end declared illegal, and all three got heavy damages.
Wilkes was, however, expelled from the House, by whose order the
offending numbers of the ‘North Briton’ were burnt by the common
hangman. But these measures did not extinguish the ‘North Briton,’ which
was continued as far as the two hundred and seventeenth number, when Mr.
William Bingley, a bookseller, who at that time owned it, was committed to
Newgate, and kept there a couple of years for refusing to reply to
interrogatories connected with an earlier number of the paper. Wilkes, who
had fled to France to escape imprisonment, next fell under the displeasure
of the House of Lords. The ‘London Evening Post,’ a paper which had
already come into collision with the Commons for presuming to publish
reports of debates, committed the seemingly venial offence of inserting a
letter from Wilkes, in which he commented rather freely upon a peer of the

realm at that time British Ambassador in Paris. The House of Lords could
not touch Wilkes, but they took proceedings against the printer for breach of
privilege in presuming to mention the name of one of its members,[18] and
fined him £100. The precedent soon became popular, and in succeeding
sessions printers were constantly fined whenever they mentioned, even by
accident, the name of a peer.
Journalism was in these days an ill-used profession. The reign of George
III. must always be remembered as a time when newspapers and those who
wrote them were at the mercy of the people in power. Grant[19] declares that
the despotic and tyrannical treatment of the press during the several
administrations under George III. had no parallel in English history. The
executive was capriciously sensitive to criticism, and readily roused to
extreme measures. No newspaper indeed was safe; the editors of Liberal
prints, or their contributors, who touched on political subjects were at the
mercy of the Attorney-General. Any morning’s issue might be made the
subject of a prosecution, and every independent writer on the wrong side
went in daily dread of fine, the pillory, or committal to Newgate.[20] Among
the early records of the great organ which custom has long honoured with
the title of the “leading journal,” are several instances of the dangers
journalists ran. The ‘Daily Universal Register,’ started by the first Mr. John
Walter in 1785, became the ‘Times’ in 1788. On the 11th July, 1789, the
publisher—at that time Mr. Walter himself—of the paper was tried and
convicted of alleged libels on three royal dukes, York, Gloucester, and
Cumberland, whose joy at the recovery of the king the ‘Times’ dared to
characterize as “insincere.” The sentence decreed and inflicted was a fine of
£50, imprisonment in Newgate for one year, and exposure on the pillory at
Charing Cross. A second prosecution followed, intended to protect, and if
possible rehabilitate, the Prince of Wales, and Mr. Walter, having been
brought from Newgate for the trial, was sentenced to a further fine of £100,
and a like sum for a libel on the Duke of Clarence. Mr. Walter remained in
Newgate for eighteen months, and was released in March 1791, having
been pardoned at the instance of the Prince of Wales.
Nor was the law invoked in favour of our own princes alone. A few years
later a foreign monarch obtained equal protection, and the editor, printer,
and publisher of the ‘Courier’ were fined and imprisoned for stigmatizing
the Czar of Russia as a tyrant among his own subjects, and ridiculous to the
rest of Europe. The House of Peers, including the Bench of Bishops,

continued very sensitive. In 1799 the printer of the ‘Cambridge
Intelligence’ was brought to the bar of the House, charged for reflecting on
the speech of the Bishop of Llandaff concerning the union with Ireland.
Lord Grenville moved that the printer should be fined £100 and committed
to Newgate; Lord Holland protested, but it was justified by Lord Kenyon,
and the motion was carried. Lord Kenyon did not spare the unfortunates
arraigned before him for libel. One Thomas Spence, who published a
pamphlet called ‘Spence’s Restorer of Society,’ in which the abolition of
private ownership of land was advocated, and its investment in parishes for
the good of the public at large, was brought before Lord Kenyon, and
sentenced by him to twelve months’ imprisonment and a fine of £50.
Another peer, Lord Ellenborough, who prosecuted Messrs. White and Hart
for a libel in 1808, obtained a conviction against them, and a sentence of
three years’ imprisonment.
In 1810 the House of Commons distinguished itself by a prosecution
which led to rather serious consequences. At a debate on the Walcheren
expedition, a member, Mr. Yorke, had insisted from day to day upon the
exclusion of strangers, and another, Mr. Windham, had inveighed violently
against press reporting. Upon this a question was discussed at a debating
society known as the “British Forum,” as to whether Mr. Yorke’s or Mr.
Windham’s conduct was the greater outrage on the public feeling. The
decision was given against Mr. Yorke, and the result announced in a placard
outside. This placard was constituted a breach of privilege, “comment upon
the proceedings of the House being deemed a contravention of the Bill of
Rights.” A Mr. John Gale Jones confessing himself the author of the
placard, he was forthwith committed to Newgate. Sir Francis Burdett took
Jones’ part, and published his protest, signed, in Cobbett’s ‘Weekly
Register.’ The House on this ordered the Sergeant-at-arms to arrest Sir
Francis and take him to the Tower. Sir Francis resisted, and was carried off
by force.[21] A riot occurred en route, the crowd attacked the escort, and the
troops fired, with fatal consequences, upon the crowd. Sir Francis appealed
to the law courts, which in the end refused to take cognizance of the
questions at issue, and he was released, returning home in triumph. Mr.
John Gale Jones claimed to be tried, and refused to leave Newgate without
it; but he was got out by a stratagem, loudly complaining that he had been
illegally imprisoned, and illegally thrust out. Jones was sentenced in the
autumn of the same year to twelve months’ imprisonment in Coldbath

Fields Gaol. Another and a better known writer found himself in Newgate
about this time. In 1810 William Cobbett was tried for animadverting too
openly upon the indignity of subjecting English soldiers to corporal
punishment, for which he was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment in
Newgate, and a fine of £1000. This was not his first prosecution, but it was
by far the most serious. Shorter sentences of imprisonment were imposed
on his printers and publishers, Messrs. Hansard, Budd, and Bagshaw.
Some other notable criminals found themselves in Newgate about this
date. In 1809 it became the place of punishment for two Government
officials who were convicted of embezzlement on a large scale. The first,
Mr. Alexander Davison, was employed to purchase barrack-stores for the
Government on commission. He was intrusted with this duty by the
barrack-master general, as a person of extensive mercantile experience, to
avoid the uncertainty of trusting to contractors. Mr. Davison was to receive
a commission of 2½ per cent. Instead of buying in the best and cheapest
markets, he himself became the seller, thus making a profit on the goods
and receiving the commission as well; or, in the words of Mr. Justice Grose,
Davison, when “receiving a stipend to check the frauds of others, and insure
the best commodities at the cheapest rate, became the tradesman and seller
of the article, and had thereby an interest to increase his own profit, and to
commit that fraud it was his duty to prevent.” Davison disgorged some
£18,000 of his ill-won profits, and this was taken into consideration in his
sentence, which was limited to imprisonment in Newgate for twenty-one
months. The other delinquent was Mr. Valentine Jones, who had been
appointed commissary-general and superintendent of forage and provisions
in the West Indies in 1795. A large British force was at that time stationed in
the West Indian Islands, which entailed vast disbursements from the public
exchequer. The whole of this money passed through the hands of Mr. Jones.
His career of fraud began directly he took over his duties. Mr. Higgins, a
local merchant, came to him proposing to renew contracts for the supply of
the troops, but Mr. Jones would only consent to their renewal on condition
that he shared Mr. Higgins’ profits. Higgins protested, but at length yielded.
Within three years the enormous sum of £87,000 sterling was paid over to
Jones as his share in this nefarious transaction. Mr. Jones was tried at the
King’s Bench and sentenced to three years’ imprisonment in Newgate.
Soon afterwards a person of very high rank was committed to Newgate.
This was the Marquis of Sligo, who was convicted of enticing British men-

of-war’s men to desert, and sentenced to imprisonment, with a fine of
£5000. Lord Sligo went to Malta soon after leaving College, and there hired
a brig, the ‘Pylades,’ intending to make a yachting tour in the Grecian
Archipelago. The admiral at Malta and other naval officers helped Lord
Sligo to fit out the ‘Pylades,’ and he was welcomed on board the various
king’s ships. From one of these several trusty seamen were shortly
afterwards missing. Their captain trusted to Lord Sligo’s honour that he had
not decoyed these men, and that he would not receive them; but at that
moment the deserters were actually on board the ‘Pylades,’ having been
enticed from the service by Lord Sligo’s servants. The ‘Pylades’ then went
on her cruise along the Mediterranean. Suspicion seems to have still rested
on Lord Sligo, and after leaving Palermo the ‘Pylades’ was chased and
brought to by H.M.S. ‘Active.’ A boat boarded the ‘Pylades,’ her crew was
mustered and examined, but the deserters had been securely hidden in the
after hold, and were not discovered. A little later Lord Sligo sailed for
Patmos, where some of the crew landed and were left behind; among them
were the men-of-war’s-men, through whom the whole affair was brought to
light. Lord Sligo was arrested on his return to England, and tried at the Old
Bailey. The evidence was conclusive. In the course of the trial a letter was
put in from Lord Sligo, to the effect that if the business was brought into
court he should do his best to defend himself; if he did not succeed, he had
an ample fortune, and could pay the fines. No money, however, could save
him from incarceration, and in accordance with the sentence of Sir William
Scott, who was supported on the bench by Lord Ellenborough and Mr.
Baron Thompson, the Marquis of Sligo was sent to Newgate for four
months.

CHAPTER II.

NEWGATE DOWN TO 1818.
Newgate still overcrowded—Some statistics—Description of interior—The various “sides” and
wards—Their dimensions and uses—Debtors in Middlesex, generally paltry debts and colossal
costs—Various debtors’ prisons in London described—The King’s Bench—The Fleet—The
Marshalsea—The Compters, Ludgate, Giltspur Street, and Borough—Debtors in Newgate—Fees
extorted—Garnish—Scanty food—Little bedding—Squalor and wretchedness prevail throughout
—Constant quarrels and fighting—Discipline maintained only by prisoner wardsmen—Their
tyranny and extortion—A new debtors’ prison indispensable—Building of Whitecross Street—The
criminal side—Indiscriminate association of all classes—The middle yard greatly crowded with
transports awaiting deportation, and with whom mere children were constantly mixed—
Deterioration rapid—Mock courts for trials of new-comers who would not adopt the ways of the
gaol—Case of a decent man completely ruined—Greater ease in the master felons’ side—Fees—
The best accommodation was in the state side, and open to all who could pay—High fees charged
—Cobbett in state side, and the Marquis of Sligo—The press yard—Recklessness of the
condemned—Cashman—The condemned cells—Summary of glaring defects in Newgate—Scanty
diet—Irons—Visitors admitted in crowds, including low females—Crimes constantly being
hatched in Newgate—The Corporation roused to reform Newgate—Appoint committee to examine
other gaols—Its report, and many useful recommendations—Few are carried out.

UNDER the conditions referred to in the previous chapter, with criminals and
misdemeanants of all shades crowding perpetually into its narrow limits, the
latter state of Newgate was worse than the first. The new gaol fell as far
short of the demands made on it as did the old. The prison population
fluctuated a great deal, but it was almost always in excess of the
accommodation available, and there were times when the place was full to
overflowing. Neild[22] gives some figures which well illustrate this. On the
14th June, 1800, there were 199 debtors and 289 felons in the prison. On
the 27th April, in the following year, these numbers had risen to 275 and
375 respectively, or 650 in all. For two more years these high figures were
steadily maintained, and in 1803 the total rose to 710. After that they fell as
steadily, till, 1808, the lowest point was touched of 197 debtors and 182
felons, or 379 in all. The numbers soon increased, however, and by 1811
had again risen to 629; and Mr. Neild was told that there had been at one
time 300 debtors and 900 criminals in Newgate, or 1200 prisoners in all.
Previous to that date there had been 700 or 800 frequently, and once, in Mr.
Akerman’s time, 1000. Trustworthy evidence is forthcoming to the effect
that these high figures were constantly maintained for many months at a

time. The inadequacy of the gaol was noticed and reported upon again and
again by the grand juries of the city of London, who seldom let a session go
by without visiting Newgate. In 1813 the grand jury made a special
presentment to the Court of Common Council, pointing out that on the
debtors’ side, which was intended for only 100, no less than 340 were
crowded, to the great inconvenience and danger of the inmates. On the
female side matters were much worse; “the apartments set apart for them,
being built to accommodate 60 persons, now contain about 120.” Returns
laid before the House of Commons showed that 6439 persons had been
committed to Newgate in the three years between 1813 and 1816, and this
number did not include the debtors, a numerous class, who were still
committed to Newgate pending the completion of the White Cross Street
prison.
In order to realize the evils entailed by incarceration in Newgate in these
days, it is necessary to give some account of its interior as it was occupied
and appropriated in 1810. Full details of the arrangements are to be found in
Mr. Neild’s ‘State of Prisons in England, Scotland, and Wales,’ published in
1812. The gaol at that date was divided into eight separate and more or less
distinct departments, each of which had its own wards and yard. These were
—
i. The male debtors’ side.
ii. The female debtors’ side.
iii. The chapel yard.
iv. The middle yard.
v. The master felons’ side.
vi. The female felons’ side.
vii. The state side.
viii. The press yard.
i. The male debtors’ side consisted of a yard forty-nine feet by thirty-one,
leading to thirteen wards on various floors, and a day room. Of these wards,
three were appropriated to the “cabin side,” so called because they each
contained four small rooms or “cabins” seven feet square, intended to
accommodate a couple of prisoners apiece, but often much more crowded.
[23] Two other wards were appropriated to the master’s side debtors; they
were each twenty-three feet by fourteen and a half, and supposed to

accommodate twenty persons. The eight remaining wards were for the
common side debtors, long narrow rooms—one thirty-six feet, six twenty-
three feet, and the eighth eighteen, the whole about fifteen feet wide. The
various wards were all about eleven feet in height, and were occupied as a
rule by ten to fifteen people when the prison was not crowded, but double
the number was occasionally placed in them. The day room was fitted with
benches and settles after the manner of the tap in a public-house.
ii. The female debtors’ side consisted of a court-yard forty-nine by sixteen
feet, leading to two wards, one of which was thirty-six feet by fifteen, and
the other eighteen by fifteen; and they nominally held twenty-two persons.
A high wall fifteen feet in height divided the females’ court-yard from the
men’s.
iii. The chapel yard was about forty-three feet by twenty-five. It had been
for some time devoted principally to felons of the worst types, those who
were the oldest offenders, sentenced to transportation, and who had
narrowly escaped the penalty of death. This arrangement was, however,
modified after 1811, and the chapel yard was allotted to misdemeanants and
prisoners awaiting trial. The wards in this part were five in number, all in
dimensions twenty feet by fifteen, with a sixth ward fifteen feet square.
These wards were all fitted with barrack-beds, but no bedding was supplied.
The chapel yard led to the chapel, and on the staircase were two rooms
frequently set apart for the king’s witnesses, those who had turned king’s
evidence, whose safety might have been imperilled had they been lodged
with the men against whom they had informed. But these king’s witnesses
were also put at times into the press yard among the capital convicts,
seemingly a very dangerous proceeding, or they lodged with the gatesmen,
the prisoner officers who had charge of the inner gates.
iv. The middle yard was at first given up to the least heinous offenders.
After 1812 it changed functions with the chapel yard. It was fifty feet by
twenty-five, and had five wards each thirty-eight by fifteen. At one end of
the yard was an arcade, directly under the chapel, in which there were three
cells, used either for the confinement of disorderly and refractory prisoners,
or female convicts ordered for execution.
v. The master felons’ side consisted of a yard the same size as the
preceding, appropriated nominally to the most decent and better-behaved
prisoners, but really kept for the few who had funds sufficient to gain them

admission to these more comfortable quarters. Here were also lodged the
gatesmen, the prisoners who had charge of the inner gates, and who were
intrusted with the duty of escorting visitors from the gates to the various
wards their friends occupied.
vi. The state side was the part stolen from the female felons’ side. It was
large and comparatively commodious, being maintained on a better footing
than any other part of the prison. The inmates were privileged, either by
antecedents or the fortunate possession of sufficient funds to pay the
charges of the place. Neild takes it for granted that the former rather than
the latter prevailed in the selection, and tells us that in the state side “such
prisoners were safely associated whose manners and conduct evince a more
liberal style of education, and who are therefore lodged apart from all other
districts of the gaol.” The state side contained twelve good-sized rooms,
from twenty-one by eighteen feet to fifteen feet square, which were
furnished with bedsteads and bedding.
vii. The press yard was that part set aside for the condemned. Its name and
its situation were the same as those of the old place of carrying out the
terrible sentence inflicted on accused persons who stood mute.[24] The long
narrow yard still remained as we saw it in Jacobite times, and beyond it was
now a day room for the capital convicts or those awaiting execution.
Beyond the press yard were three stories, condemned cells, fifteen in all,
with vaulted ceilings nine feet high to the crown of the arch. The ground
floor cells were nine feet by six; those on the first floor were rather larger
on account of a set-off in the wall; and the uppermost were the largest, for
the same reason. Security was provided for in these condemned cells by
lining the substantial stone walls with planks studded with broad-headed
nails; they were lighted by a double-grated window two feet nine inches by
fourteen inches; and in the doors, which were four inches thick, a circular
aperture had been let in to give ventilation and secure a free current of air.
In each cell there was a barrack bedstead on the floor without bedding.
viii. The female felons were deprived of part of the space which the
architect had intended for them. More than half their quadrangle had been
partitioned off for another purpose, and what remained was divided into a
master’s and a common side for female felons. The two yards were
adjoining, that for the common side much the largest. There were nine
wards in all on the female side, one of them in the attic, with four casements
and two fireplaces, being allotted for a female infirmary, and the rest being

provided with barrack beds, and in dimensions varying from thirty feet by
fifteen to fifteen feet by ten.
The eight courts above enumerated were well supplied with water; they
had dust-bins, sewers, and so forth, “properly disposed,”[25] and the city
scavenger paid periodical visits to the prison. The prisoners had few
comforts, beyond the occasional use of a bath at some distance, situated in
the press yard, to which access was granted rarely and as a great favour. But
they were allowed the luxury of drink—if they could pay for it. A recent
reform had closed the tap kept by the gaoler within the precincts, but there
was still a “convenient room” which served, and “near it a grating through
which the debtors receive their beer from the neighbouring public-houses.
The felons’ side has a similar accommodation, and this mode of introducing
the beverage is adopted because no publican as such can be permitted to
enter the interior of this prison.”[26] The tap-room and bar were just behind
the felons’ entrance lodge, and beyond it was a room called the “wine
room,” because formerly used for the sale of wine, but in which latterly a
copper had been fixed for the cooking of provisions sent in by charitable
persons. “On the top of the gaol,” continues Neild, “are a watch-house and
a sentry-box, where two or more guards, with dogs and firearms, watch all
night. Adjoining the felons’ side lodge is the keeper’s office, where the
prison books are kept, and his clerk, called the clerk of the papers, attends
daily.”[27]
Having thus briefly described the plan and appropriation of the prison, I
propose to deal now with the general condition of the inmates, and the
manner of their life. Of these the debtors, male and female, formed a large
proportion. The frequency and extent of processes against debtors seventy
or eighty years ago will appear almost incredible in an age when insolvent
acts and bankruptcy courts do so much to relieve the impecunious, and
imprisonment for debt has almost entirely disappeared.[28] But at the time of
which I am writing the laws were relentless against all who failed to meet
their engagements. The number of processes against debtors annually was
extraordinary. Neild gives, on the authority of Mr. Burchell, the under
sheriff of Middlesex, a table showing the figures for the year ending
Michaelmas 1802. In that period upwards of 200,000 writs had been issued
for the arrests of debtors in the kingdom, for sums varying from fourpence
to £500 and upwards. Fifteen thousand of these were issued in Middlesex
alone, which at that time was reckoned as only a fifteenth of Great Britain.

The number of arrests actually made was 114,300 for the kingdom, and
7020 for Middlesex. Barely half of these gave bail bonds on arrests, and the
remainder went to prison. Quite half of the foregoing writs and arrests
applied to sums under £30. Neild also says that in 1793, 5719 writs and
executions for debts between £10 and £20 were issued in Middlesex, and
the aggregate amount of debts sued for was £81,791. He also makes the
curious calculation that the costs of these actions if undefended would have
amounted to £68,728, and if defended, £285,950; in other words, that to
recover eighty odd thousand pounds, three times the amount would be
expended.
An elaborate machinery planned for the protection of the trader, and
altogether on his side, had long existed for the recovery of debts. Alfred the
Great established the Court Baron, the Hundred Court, and the County
Court, which among other matters entertained pleas for debt. The County
Court was the sheriff’s, who sat there surrounded by the bishop and the
magnates of the county; but as time passed, difficulties and delays in
obtaining judgment led to the removal of causes to the great Court of King’s
Bench, and the disuse of the inferior courts. So much inconvenience
ensued, that in 1518 the Corporation obtained from Parliament an act
empowering two aldermen and four common councilmen to hold Courts of
Requests, or Courts of Conscience, to hear and determine all causes of debt
under 40s. arising within the city. These courts were extended two centuries
later to several large provincial towns, and all were in full activity when
Neild wrote, and indeed supplied the bulk of the poor debtors committed to
prison. These courts were open to many and grave objections. The
commissioners who presided were “little otherwise than self-elected,[29] and
when once appointed continued to serve sine die;”[30] they were generally
near in rank to the parties whose causes they decided. Often a commissioner
had to leave the bench because he was himself a party to the suit that was
sub judice. The activity as well as the futility of these courts may be
estimated from the statement given by Neild, that 1312 debtors were
committed by them to Newgate between 1797 and 1808, and that no more
than 197 creditors recovered debts and costs. The latter indeed hung like
millstones round the neck of the unhappy insolvent wretches who found
themselves in limbo. Costs were the gallons of sack to the pennyworth of
debt. Neild found at his visit to Newgate in 1810, fourteen men and women
who had lain there ten, eleven, and thirteen years for debts of a few

shillings, weighted by treble the amount of costs. Thus, amongst others,
Thomas Blackburn had been committed on October 15th for a debt of 1s.
5d., for which the costs were 6s. 10d. Thomas Dobson, on 22nd August,
1799, for 1s., with costs of 8s. 10d.; and Susannah Evans, in October the
same year, for 2s., with costs of 6s. 8d. Other cases are recorded elsewhere,
as at the Giltspur Street Compter, where in 1805 Mr. Neild found a man
named William Grant detained for 1s. 9d., with costs of 5s., and John
Lancaster for 1s. 8d., with costs of 7s. 6d. “These surely, I thought,” says
Mr. Neild, “were bad enough! But it was not so.” He recites another most
outrageous and extraordinary case, in which one John Bird, a market porter,
was arrested and committed at the suit of a publican for the paltry sum of
4d., with costs of 7s. 6d. Bird was, however, discharged within three days
by a subscription raised among his fellow-prisoners.
Mr. Buxton, in his ‘Inquiry into the System of Prison Discipline,’ quotes
a case which came within his own knowledge of a boy sent to prison for
non-payment of one penny. The lad in question was found in Coldbath
Fields prison, to which he had been sent for a month in default of paying a
fine of forty shillings. He had been in the employ of a corn-chandler at
Islington, and went into London with his master’s cart and horse. There was
in the City Road a temporary bar, with a collector of tolls who was
sometimes on the spot and sometimes not. The boy declared he saw no one,
and accordingly passed through without paying the toll of a penny. For this
he was summoned before a magistrate, and sentenced as already stated. The
lad was proved to be of good character and the son of respectable parents.
Mr. Buxton’s friends at once paid the forty shillings, and the boy was
released.
The costs in heavier debts always doubled the sum; if the arrest was
made in the country it trebled it. Neild gives a list of the various items
charged upon a debt of £10, which included instructions to sue, affidavit of
debt, drawing præcipe (£1 5s.), capias, fee to officer on arrest, affidavit of
service, and many more, amounting in all to twenty-seven, and costing £11
15s. 8d., within ten days.[31]
Before dealing with the debtors in Newgate, I may refer incidentally to
those in other London prisons, for Newgate was not the only place of
durance for these unfortunate people. There were also the King’s Bench, the
Fleet, and the Marshalsea prisons especially devoted to them, whilst
Ludgate, the Giltspur Street, and Borough Compters also received them—

the latter two being also a prison for felons and vagrants arrested within
certain limits.
The King’s Bench was a national prison, in which were confined all
debtors arrested for debt or for contempt of the court of the King’s Bench.
The population generally amounted to from five hundred to seven hundred,
the accommodation being calculated for two hundred. Every new-comer
was entitled to a “chummage” ticket, but did not always get it, being often
obliged to pay a high rent for a bed at the coffee-house or in some room
which was vacated by its regular occupant. No fixed rates or rules governed
the hiring out of rooms or parts of a room, and all sorts of imposition was
practised. The best, or at least the most influential prisoners, got lodging in
the State House, which contained “eight large handsome rooms.” Besides
those actually resident within the walls, another two hundred more or less
took advantage of “the rules,” and lived outside within a circumference of
two miles and a half. In these cases security was given for the amount of the
debt, and a heavy fee at the rate of £8 per £100, with £4 for every additional
hundred. Besides these, a number had the privilege of a “run on the key,”
which allowed a prisoner to go into the rules for the day. The foregoing
rentals and payments for privileges, together with fees exacted on
commitment and discharge, went to the marshal or keeper of the prison,
whose net annual income thus entirely derived from the impecunious
amounted to between three and four thousand pounds. The office of marshal
had been hereditary, but in the 27th Geo. II. the right of presentation was
bought by the Crown for £10,500. The marshal was supposed to be resident
either within the prison or the rules. He seems to have felt no responsibility
as to the welfare or comfort of those in charge, and out of whom he made
all his money. The prison was always in “the most filthy state
imaginable.”[32] The half or wholly starved prisoners fished for alms or
food at the gratings. When they were sick no more notice was taken of them
than of a dog. A man dying of liver complaint lay on the cold stones without
a bed or food to eat. Dissolute habits prevailed on all sides; drunkenness
was universal, gambling perpetual. The yards were taken up with rackets
and five courts, and here and there were “bumble puppy grounds,” a game
in which the players rolled iron balls into holes marked with numbers. How
to make most profit out of the wretched denizens of the gaol was the
marshal’s only care. He got a rent for the coffee-house and the bake-house;
the keeper of the large tap-room called the Brace, because it was once kept

by two brothers named Partridge, also paid him toll. The sale of spirits was
forbidden, but gin could always be had at the whistling shops, where it was
known as Moonshine, Sky Blue, Mexico, and was consumed at the rate of a
hogshead per week.
The Fleet, which stood in Farringdon Street, was a prison for debtors and
persons committed for contempt by the courts of Chancery, Exchequer, and
Common Pleas. It was so used for the date of the abolition of the Star
Chamber in the 16th Charles I. The shameful malpractices of Bambridge,
the warden of the Fleet at the commencement of the eighteenth century, are
too well known to need more than a passing reference. A committee of the
House of Commons investigated the charges against Bambridge, who was
proved to have connived at the escape of some debtors, and to have been
guilty of extortion to others. One Sir William Rich, Bart., he had loaded
with heavy irons. In consequence of these disclosures, both Bambridge and
Huggin, his predecessor in the office, were committed to Newgate, and
many reforms instituted. But the condition of the prison and its inmates
remained unsatisfactory to the last. It contained generally from six to seven
hundred inmates,[33] while another hundred more or less resided in the rules
outside. The principle of “chummage” prevailed as in the King’s Bench, but
a number of rooms, fifteen more or less, were reserved for poor debtors
under the name of Bartholomew Fair. The rentals of rooms and fees went to
the warden, whose income was £2372. The same evils of overcrowding,
uncleanliness, want of medical attendance, absence or neglect of divine
service, were present as in the King’s Bench, but in an exaggerated form.
The Committee on Gaols[34] reported that “although the house of the
warden looked into the court, and the turnkeys slept in the prison, yet
scenes of riot, drunkenness, and disorder were most prevalent.” The state of
morals was disgraceful. Any woman obtained admission if sober, and if she
got drunk she was not turned out. There was no distinct place for the female
debtors, who lived in the same galleries as the men. Disturbances were
frequent, owing to the riotous conduct of intoxicated women. Twice a week
there was a wine and beer club held at night, which lasted till two or three
in the morning. In the yard behind the prison were places set apart for
skittles, fives, and tennis, which strangers frequented as any other place of
public amusement.
Matters were rather better at the Marshalsea. This very ancient prison,
which stood in the High Street, Southwark, was used for debtors arrested

for the lowest sums within twelve miles of the palace of Whitehall; also for
prisoners committed by the Admiralty Court. At one time the Marshalsea
was the receptacle of pirates, but none were committed to it after 1789. The
court of the Marshalsea was instituted by Charles I. in the sixth year of his
reign, to be held before the steward of the royal household, the knight
marshal, and the steward of the court, with jurisdiction to hold pleas in all
actions within the prescribed limits. The court was chiefly used for the
recovery of small debts under £10, but its business was much reduced by
the extension of the Courts of Conscience. The prison was a nest of abuses,
like its neighbour the King’s Bench, and came under the strong
animadversion of the Gaol Committee of 1729. As the business of the
Marshalsea Court declined, the numbers in its prison diminished. The
population, as reported by the committee in 1814, averaged about sixty, and
the prison, although wives and children resided within the walls, was not
overcrowded. Their conduct too was orderly on the whole. Drunkenness
was not common, chiefly because liquor was not to be had freely, although
the tapster paid a rent of two guineas a week for permission to sell it. The
inmates, who euphemistically styled themselves “collegians,” were
governed by rules which they themselves had framed, and under which
subscriptions were levied and fines imposed for conduct disapproved of by
the “college.” A court of the collegians was held every Monday to manage
its affairs, at which all prisoners were required to attend. A committee of
collegians was elected to act as the executive, also a secretary or accountant
to receive monies and keep books, and a master of the ale-room, who kept
this the scene of their revels clean, and saw that boiling water was provided
for grog. Bad language, quarrelling, throwing water over one another was
forbidden on pain of fine and being sent to Coventry; but the prevailing
moral tone may be guessed from the penalty inflicted upon persons singing
obscene songs before nine p.m. Yet the public opinion of the whole body
seems to have checked dissipation. The poorer prisoners were not in abject
want, as in other prisons, owing to many charitable gifts and bequests,
which included annual donations from the Archbishop of Canterbury, the
Lord Steward of the Household, the steward and officers of the Marshalsea
Court, and others. Legacies had also been left to free a certain number of
debtors, notably that of £100 per annum left by a Mr. Henry Allnutt, who
was long a prisoner in the Marshalsea, and came into a fortune while there.
His bequest, which was charged upon his manor at Goring, Oxon, and

hence called the Oxford Charity, was applied only to the release of poor
debtors whom £4 each could free. The supreme control of the Marshalsea
was vested in the marshal of the royal household; but although he drew a
salary of £500 a year, he did nothing beyond visiting the prison
occasionally, and left the administration to the deputy marshal. The latter’s
salary, with fees, the rent of the tap and of the chandler’s shop, amounted to
about £600 a year.
The compters of Ludgate, Giltspur Street, and the Borough were
discontinued as debtors’ prisons (as was Newgate also) on the opening of
Whitecross prison for debtors in 1815. Ludgate to the last was the debtors’
prison for freemen of the city of London, clergymen, proctors, attorneys,
and persons specially selected by the Corporation. At one time the Ludgate
debtors, accompanied by the keeper, went outside and beyond the prison to
call on their creditors, and try to arrange their debts, but this practice was
discontinued. There were fifteen rooms of various sizes, and as the numbers
imprisoned rarely exceeded five-and-twenty, the place was never
overcrowded, while the funds of several bequests and charities were applied
in adding to the material comfort of the prisoners. The Giltspur Street
Compter received sheriffs’ debtors, also felons, vagrants, and night charges.
It was generally crowded, as debtors who would have gone to the Poultry
Compter were sent to Giltspur Street when the former was condemned as
unfit to receive prisoners.[35] The demands for fees were excessive in
Giltspur Street. Those who could not pay were thrown into the wards with
the night charges, and denied admission to the “charity wards,” which
partook of all the benefits of bequests and donations to poor debtors. The
Borough Compter was in a disgraceful state to the last. The men’s ward had
an earth, or rather a mud, floor, and was so unfit to sleep on that it had not
been used for many years, so that the men and women associated together
indiscriminately. The rooms had no fireplaces, so it mattered little that no
coals were allowed. There were no beds or bedding, no straw even. In one
room Mr. Neild found a woman ill of a flux shut up with three men; the
latter raised eighteenpence among them to pay for a truss of straw for the
poor woman to lie on. Neild found the prisoners in the Borough Compter
ragged, starving, and dirty.
I come now to the debtors in Newgate. The quarters they occupied were
divided, as I have said,[36] into three principal divisions—the master’s side,
the cabin side, and the common side. Payment of a fee of 3s. gained the

debtor admission to the two first named; those who could pay nothing went,
as a matter of course, to the common side; a further fee was, however,
demanded from the new-comer before he was made free of either the
master’s or the cabin side. This was the reprehensible claim for “garnish,”
which had already been abolished in all well-conducted prisons, but which
still was demanded in Newgate. Garnish on the cabin side was a guinea at
entrance for coals, candles, brooms, &c., and a gallon of beer on discharge;
on the master’s side it was thirteen and fourpence, and a gallon of beer on
entrance, although Mr. Newman, in his evidence in 1814, said it was more,
and gave the garnish for the common side at that sum, which is five
shillings more than Mr. Neild says was extorted on the common side.
Numerous tyrannies were practised on all who would not and could not pay
the garnish. They were made to wash and swab the ward, or they were shut
out from the ward fireplace, and forbidden to pass a chalked line drawn on
the floor, and so were unable either to warm themselves or to cook their
food. Besides these fees, legitimate and illegitimate, there were others
which must be paid before release. The sheriff demanded 4s. 6d. for his
liberate, the gaoler 6s. 10d. more, and the turnkey 2s.; and thus when the
debtor’s debt had been actually paid, or when he had abandoned his
property to the creditors, and, almost destitute, looked forward to his liberty,
he was still delayed until he had paid a new debt arising “only out of a
satisfaction of all his former debts.” The fees were not always extorted, it is
true; nor was non-payment made a pretext for further imprisonment, thanks
to the humanity of the gaoler, or the funds provided by various charities.
There was this much honest forbearance in Newgate in these days, that
debtors who could afford the cabin and master’s side were not permitted to
share in the prison charities. These were lumped together into a general
fund, and a calculation made as to the amount that might be expended per
week from the whole sum, so that the latter might last out the year. It
generally ran to about six pounds per week. The money, which at one time
had been distributed quarterly, and all went in drink, was after 1807,
through the exertions of the keeper[37] of the gaol, spent in the purchase of
necessaries. But this weekly pittance did not go far when the debtors’ side
was crowded, as it often was; notably as when numbers filled Newgate in
anticipation of Lord Redesdale’s bill for insolvent debtors, and there were
as many as three hundred and fifty prisoners in at one time. The city also
allowed the poor debtors fourteen ounces of bread daily, and their share of

eight stone of meat, an allowance which never varied, issued once a week,
and divided as far as it would go—a very precarious and uncertain ration.
The bread was issued every alternate day; and while some prisoners often
ate their whole allowance at once, others who arrived just after the time of
distribution were often forty-eight hours without food. The latter might also
be six days without meat. Share in the weekly allowance of meat might also
be denied to debtors who had not paid “garnish,” as well as in the weekly
grant from the charitable fund. Hence starvation stared many in the face,[38]
unless friends from outside came to their assistance, or the keeper made
them a special grant of 6d. per diem out of the common stock; or the
sixpenny allowance was claimed for the creditors, which seldom happened,
owing to the expense the process entailed. The poor debtors were not
supplied with beds. Those who could pay the price might hire them from
each other, or from persons who made a trade of it, or they might bring their
beds with them into the prison. Failing any of these methods, seeing that
straw was forbidden for fear of fire, they had to be satisfied with a couple of
the rugs provided by the city, the supply of which was, however, limited,
and there were not always enough to give bedding to all. The stock was
diminished by theft; female visitors carried them out of the prisons, or the
debtors destroyed them when the weather was warm, and they were not in
great demand, in order to convert them into mop-heads or cleaning-rags.
Sometimes rugs were urgently required and not forthcoming; a severe
winter set in, the new stock had not been supplied by the contractors, and
the poor debtors perished of cold. Again, there was no regular allowance of
fuel. Coals were purchased out of the garnish money and the charitable
fund; so were candles, salt, pepper, mops and brooms. But the latter could
have been of little service. Dirt prevailed everywhere; indeed the place,
with its oak floors caulked with pitch, and smoked ceilings, could not be
made even to look clean while there was no obligation of personal
cleanliness on individuals, who often came into the prison in filthy rags.
Only now and again, in extreme cases, an unusually nasty companion was
stripped, haled to the pump, and left under it in a state of nature until he was
washed clean.
The squalor and uncleanness of the debtors’ side was intensified by
constant overcrowding. Prisoners were committed to it quite without
reference to its capacity. No remonstrance was attended to, no steps taken to
reduce the number of committals, and the governor was obliged to utilize

the chapel as a day and night room. Besides this, although the families of
debtors were no longer permitted to live with them inside the gaol,
hundreds of women and children came in every morning to spend the day
there, and there was no limitation whatever to the numbers of visitors
admitted to the debtors’ side. Friends arrived about nine a.m., and went out
at nine p.m., when as many as two hundred visitors have been observed
leaving the debtors’ yards at one time. The day passed in revelry and
drunkenness. Although spirituous liquors were forbidden, wine and beer
might be had in any quantity, the only limitation being that not more than
one bottle of wine or one quart of beer could be issued at one time. No
account was taken of the amount of liquors admitted in one day, and debtors
might practically have as much as they liked, if they could only pay for it.
No attempt was made to check drunkenness, beyond the penalty of shutting
out friends from any ward in which a prisoner exceeded. Quarrelling among
the debtors was not unfrequent. Blows were struck, and fights often ensued.
For this and other acts of misconduct there was the discipline of the
refractory ward, or “strong room” on the debtors’ side. Bad cases were
removed to a cell on the felons’ side, and here they were locked in solitary
confinement for three days at a time.
Order throughout the debtors’ side was preserved and discipline
maintained by a system open to grave abuses, and which had the
prescription of long usage, and which was never wholly rooted out for
many years to come. This was the pernicious plan of governing by
prisoners, or of setting a favoured few in authority over the many. The head
of the debtors’ prison was a prisoner called the steward, who was chosen by
the whole body from six whom the keeper nominated. This steward was
practically supreme. All the allowances of food passed through his hands;
he had the control of the poor-box for chance charities, he collected the
garnish money, and distributed the weekly grant from the prison charitable
fund. In the latter duties he was, however, supervised by three auditors,
freely chosen by the prisoners among themselves. The auditors were paid a
shilling each for their services each time the poor-box was opened. The
steward was also remunerated for his trouble. He had a double allowance of
bread, deducted, of course, from the already too limited portion of the rest,
and no doubt made the meat also pay toll. Under the steward there were
captains of wards, chosen in the same way, and performing analogous
duties. These subordinate chiefs were also rewarded out of the scanty prison

rations. The same system was extended to the criminal side, and cases were
on record of the place of wardsman being sold for considerable sums. So
valuable were they deemed, that as much as fifty guineas was offered to the
keeper for the post.
Enough has been said, probably, to prove that there was room for
improvement in the condition and treatment of debtors in the prisons of the
city of London. This gradually was forced upon the consciousness of the
Corporation, and about 1812 application was made to Parliament for funds
to build a new debtors’ prison. Authority was given to raise money on the
Orphans’ Fund to the extent of £90,000. A site was purchased between Red
Lion and White Cross streets, and a new prison planned, which would
accommodate the inmates of Newgate and of the three compters, Ludgate,
Giltspur Street, and the Poultry, or about four hundred and seventy-six in
all. The evils of association for these debtors were perpetuated, although the
plan provided for the separation of the various contingents committed to it.
There was no lack of air and light for the new gaol, and several exercising
yards. The completion of this very necessary building was, however, much
delayed for want of funds, and it was not ready to relieve Newgate till late
in 1815. The reforms which were to be attempted in that prison, more
particularly as regarded the classification of prisoners, and which were
dependent on the space to be gained by the removal of the debtors, could
not be carried out till then. It is to be feared that long after the opening of
White Cross Street prison, Newgate continued to be a reproach to those
responsible for its management.
I pass now to the criminal side of Newgate, which consisted of the six
quarters or yards already enumerated and described.[39] The inmates of this
part, as distinguished from the debtors, were comprised in four classes:—
(1) those awaiting trial; (2) persons under sentence of imprisonment for a
fixed period, or until they shall have paid certain fines; (3) transports
awaiting removal to the colonies, and (4) capital convicts, condemned to
death and awaiting execution. At one time the whole of these different
categories were thrown together pell-mell, young and old, the untried with
the convicted. An imperfect attempt at classification was, however, made in
1812, and a yard was as far as possible set apart for the untried, or class (1),
with whom, under the imperious demand for accommodation, were also
associated the misdemeanants, or class (2). This was the chapel yard, with
its five wards, which were calculated to hold seventy prisoners, but often

held many more. A further sub-classification was attempted by separating at
night those charged with misdemeanours from those charged with felony,
but all mingled freely during the day in the yard. The sleeping
accommodation in the chapel-yard wards, and indeed throughout the prison,
consisted of a barrack bed, which was a wooden flooring on a slightly
inclined plane, with a beam running across the top to serve as a pillow. No
beds were issued, only two rugs per prisoner. When each sleeper had the
full lateral space allotted to him, it amounted to one foot and a half on the
barrack bed; but when the ward was obliged to accommodate double the
ordinary number, as was frequently the case, the sleepers covered the entire
floor, with the exception of a passage in the middle. All the misdemeanants,
whatever their offence, were lodged in this chapel ward. As many various
and, according to our ideas, heinous crimes came under this head, in the
then existing state of the law, the man guilty of a common assault found
himself side by side with the fraudulent, or others who had attempted
abominable crimes. In this heterogeneous society were also thrown the
unfortunate journalists to whom I have already referred,[40] and on whom
imprisonment in Newgate was frequently adjudged for so-called libels, or
too out-spoken comments in print. It was particularly recommended by the
Committee on Gaols in 1814 that some other and less mixed prison should
be used for the confinement of persons convicted of libels. But this
suggestion was ignored. Indeed the partial classification attempted seems to
have been abandoned within a year or two. The Hon. H. G. Bennet, who
visited Newgate in 1817, saw in one yard, in a total of seventy-two
prisoners, thirty-five tried and thirty-seven untried. Of the former, three
were transports for life, four for fourteen years, and three of them persons
sentenced to fines or short imprisonment—one for little more than a month.
Two of the untried were for murder, and several for house-breaking and
highway robbery. Nor were the misdemeanants and bail prisoners any
longer separated from those whose crimes were of a more serious character.
Mr. Bennet refers to a gentleman confined for want of bail, who occupied a
room with five others—two committed by the Bankruptcy Commissioner,
one for perjury, and two transports. Persons convicted of publishing libels
were still immured in the same rooms with transports and felons.
The middle yard, as far as its limits would permit, was appropriated to
felons and transports. The wards here were generally very crowded. Each
ward was calculated to hold twenty-four, allowing each individual one foot

and a half; “a common-sized man,” says the keeper, Mr. Newman, “can turn
in nineteen inches.”[41] These twenty-four could just sleep on the barrack
bed; when the number was higher, and it often rose to forty, the surplus had
to sleep on the floor. The crowding was in consequence of the delay in
removing transports. These often remained in Newgate for six months,
sometimes a year, in some cases longer; in one, for seven years—that of a
man sentenced to death, for whom great interest had been made, but whom
it was not thought right to pardon. Occasionally the transports made
themselves so useful in the gaol that they were passed over. Mr. Newman
admitted that he had petitioned that certain “trusty men” might be left in the
gaol. Constantly associated with these convicted felons were numbers of
juveniles, infants of tender years. There were frequently in the middle yard
seven or eight children, the youngest barely nine, the oldest only twelve or
thirteen, exposed to all the contaminating influences of the place. Mr.
Bennet mentions also the case of young men of better stamp, clerks in city
offices, and youths of good parentage, “in this dreadful situation,” who had
been rescued from the hulks through the kindness and attention of the
Secretary of State. “Yet they had been long enough,” he goes on to say, “in
the prison associated with the lowest and vilest criminals, with convicts of
all ages and characters, to render it next to impossible but that, with the
obliteration of all sense of self-respect, the inevitable consequence of such a
situation, their morals must have been destroyed; and though distress or the
seduction of others might have led to the commission of this their first
offence, yet the society they were driven to live in, the language they daily
heard, and the lessons they were taught in this academy, must have had a
tendency to turn them into the world hardened and accomplished in the
ways of vice and crime.”
Mr. Buxton, in the work already quoted, instances another grievous case
of the horrors of indiscriminate association in Newgate. It was that of a
person “who practised in the law, and who was connected by marriage with
some very respectable families. Having been committed to Clerkenwell, he
was sent on to Newgate in a coach, handcuffed to a noted house-breaker,
who was afterwards cast for death. The first night in Newgate, and for the
subsequent fortnight, he slept in the same bed with a highwayman on one
side, and a man charged with murder on the other. Spirits were freely
introduced, and although he at first abstained, he found he must adopt the
manners of his companions, or that his life would be in danger. They

viewed him with some suspicion, as one of whom they knew nothing. He
was in consequence put out of the protection of their internal law.” Their
code was a subject of some curiosity. When any prisoner committed an
offence against the community or against an individual, he was tried by a
court in the gaol. A prisoner, generally the oldest and most dexterous thief,
was appointed judge, and a towel tied in knots was hung on each side in
imitation of a wig. The judge sat in proper form; he was punctiliously styled
“my lord.” A jury having been selected and duly sworn, the culprit was then
arraigned. Justice, however, was not administered with absolute integrity. A
bribe to the judge was certain to secure acquittal, and the neglect of the
formality was as certainly followed by condemnation. Various punishments
were inflicted, the heaviest of which was standing in the pillory. This was
carried out by putting the criminal’s head through the legs of a chair, and
stretching out his arms and tying them to the legs. The culprit was then
compelled to carry the chair about with him. But all punishments might
readily be commuted into a fine to be spent in gin for judge and jury.
The prisoner mentioned above was continually persecuted by trials of
this kind. The most trifling acts were magnified into offences. He was
charged with moving something which should not be touched, with leaving
a door open, or coughing maliciously to the disturbance of his companions.
The evidence was invariably sufficient to convict, and the judge never
hesitated to inflict the heaviest penalties. The unfortunate man was
compelled at length to adopt the habits of his associates; “by insensible
degrees he began to lose his repugnance to their society, caught their flash
terms and sung their songs, was admitted to their revels, and acquired, in
place of habits of perfect sobriety, a taste for spirits.” His wife visited him
in Newgate, and wrote a pitiable account of the state in which she found her
husband. He was an inmate of the same ward with others of the most
dreadful sort, “whose language and manners, whose female associates of
the most abandoned description, and the scenes consequent with such lost
wretches, prevented me from going inside but seldom, and I used to
communicate with him through the bars from the passage.” One day he was
too ill to come down and meet her. She went up to the ward and found him
lying down, “pale as death, very ill, and in a dreadfully dirty state, the
wretches making game of him, and enjoying my distress; and I learned he
had been up with the others the whole night. Though they could not force
him to gamble, he was compelled to drink, and I was obliged afterwards to

let him have five shillings to pay his share, otherwise he would have been
stripped of his clothes.”
Felons who could pay the price were permitted, irrespective of their
character or offences, to purchase the greater ease and comfort of the
master’s side. The entrance fee was at least 13s. 6d. a head, with half-a-
crown a week more for bed and bedding, the wards being furnished with
barrack bedsteads, upon which each prisoner had the regulation allowance
of sleeping room, or about a foot and a half laterally. These fees were in
reality a substantial contribution towards the expenses of the gaol; without
them the keeper declared that he could not pay the salaries of turnkeys and
servants, nor keep the prison going at all. Besides the gaol fees, there was
garnish of half-a-guinea, collected by the steward, and spent in providing
coals, candles, plates, knives, and forks; while all the occupants of this part
of the prison supported themselves; they had the ration of prison bread only,
but they had no share in the prison meat or other charities, and they or their
friends found them in food. All who could scrape together the cash seem to
have gladly availed themselves of the privilege of entering the master’s
side. It was the only way to escape the horrors, the distress, penury, and
rags of the common yards. Idleness was not so universally the rule in this
part of the gaol. Artizans and others were at liberty to work at their trades,
provided they were not dangerous. Tailoring and shoemaking was
permitted, but it was deemed unsafe to allow a carpenter or blacksmith to
have his tools. All the money earned by prisoners was at their own disposal,
and was spent almost habitually in drink, chambering, and wantonness.
The best accommodation the gaol could offer was reserved for the
prisoners on the state side, from whom still higher fees were exacted, with
the same discreditable idea of swelling the revenues of the prison. To
constitute this the aristocratic quarter, unwarrantable demands were made
upon the space properly allotted to the female felons,[42] and no lodger was
rejected, whatever his status, who offered himself and could bring grist to
the mill. The luxury of the state side was for a long time open to all who
could pay—the convicted felon, the transport awaiting removal, the lunatic
whose case was still undecided,[43] the misdemeanant tried or untried, the
debtor who wished to avoid the discomfort of the crowded debtors’ side, the
outspoken newspaper editor, or the daring reporter of parliamentary
debates. The better class of inmate complained bitterly of this enforced
companionship with the vile, association at one time forbidden by custom,

but which greed and rapacity long made the rule. The fee for admission to
the state side, as fixed by the table of fees, was three guineas, but Mr.
Newman declared that he never took more than two. Ten and sixpence a
week more was charged as rent for a single bed; where two or more slept in
a bed the rent was seven shillings a week each. Prisoners who could afford
it sometimes paid for four beds, at the rate of twenty-eight shillings, and so
secured the luxury of a private room. A Mr. Lundy, charged with forgery,
was thus accommodated on the state side for upwards of five years. But the
keeper protested that no single prisoner could thus monopolize space if the
state side was crowded. The keeper went still further in his efforts to make
money. He continued the ancient practice of letting out a portion of his own
house, and by a poetical fiction treated it as an annexe of the state side. Mr.
Davison, sent to Newgate for embezzlement, and whose case is given in the
preceding chapter, was accommodated with a room in Mr. Newman’s house
at the extravagant rental of thirty guineas per week; Mr. Cobbett was also a
lodger of Mr. Newman’s; and so were any members of the aristocracy, if
they happened to be in funds—among whom was the Marquis of Sligo in
1811.
The female felons’ wards I shall describe at length in the next chapter,
which will deal with Mrs. Fry’s philanthropic exertions at this period in this
particular part of the prison. These wards were always full to overflowing;
sometimes double the number the rooms could accommodate were crowded
into them. There was a master’s side for females who could pay the usual
fees, but they associated with the rest in the one narrow yard common to all.
The tried and the untried, young and old, were herded together; sometimes
girls of thirteen, twelve, even ten or nine years of age, were exposed to “all
the contagion and profligacy which prevailed in this part of the prison.”
There was no separation even for the women under sentence of death, who
lived in a common and perpetually crowded ward. Only when the order of
execution came down were those about to suffer placed apart in one of the
rooms in the arcade of the middle ward.
I have kept till the last that part of the prison which was usually the last
resting-place of so many. The old press yard has been fully described in a
previous chapter.[44] The name still survived in the new press yard, which
was the receptacle of the male condemned prisoners. It was generally
crowded, like the rest of the prison. Except in murder cases, where the
execution was generally very promptly performed, strange and

inconceivable delay occurred in carrying out the extreme sentence. Hence
there was a terrible accumulation of prisoners in the condemned cells.
Once, during the long illness of George III., as many as one hundred were
there waiting the “Report,” as it was called. At another time there were fifty,
one of whom had been under sentence a couple of years. Mr. Bennet speaks
of thirty-eight capital convicts he found in the press yard in February 1817,
five of whom had been condemned the previous July, four in September,
and twenty-nine in October. This procrastination bred certain callousness.
Few realizing that the dreadful fate would overtake them, dismissed the
prospect of death, and until the day was actually fixed, spent the time in
roystering, swearing, gambling, or playing at ball. Visitors were permitted
access to them without stint; unlimited drink was not denied them provided
it was obtained in regulated quantities at one time. These capital convicts,
says Mr. Bennet, “lessened the ennui and despair of their situation by
unbecoming merriment, or sought relief in the constant application of
intoxicating stimulants. I saw Cashman[45] a few hours before his execution,
smoking and drinking with the utmost unconcern and indifference.” Those
who were thus reckless reacted upon the penitent who knew their days were
numbered, and their gibes and jollity counteracted the ordinary’s counsels
or the independent preacher’s earnest prayers. For while Roman Catholics
and Dissenters were encouraged to see ministers of their own persuasion, a
number of amateurs were ever ready to give their gratuitous ministrations to
the condemned.
The prisoners in the press yard had free access during the day to the yard
and large day room; at night they were placed in the fifteen cells, two, three,
or more together, according to the total number to be accommodated. They
were never left quite alone for fear of suicide, and for the same reason they
were searched for weapons or poisons. But they nevertheless frequently
managed to secrete the means of making away with themselves, and
accomplished their purpose. Convicted murderers were kept continuously in
the cells on bread and water, in couples, from the time of sentence to that of
execution, which was about three or four days generally, from Friday to
Monday, so as to include one Sunday, on which day there was a special
service for the condemned in the prison chapel. This latter was an ordeal
which all dreaded, and many avoided by denying their faith. The
condemned occupied an open pew in the centre of the chapel, hung with
black; in front of them, upon a table, was a black coffin in full view. The

chapel was filled with a curious but callous congregation, who came to stare
at the miserable people thus publicly exposed. Well might Mr. Bennet write
that the condition of the condemned side was the most prominent of the
manifold evils in the present system of Newgate, “so discreditable to the
metropolis.”
Yet it must have been abundantly plain to the reader that the other evils
existing were great and glaring. A brief summary of them will best prove
this. The gaol was neither suitable nor sufficiently large. It was not even
kept weather-tight. The roof of the female prison, says the grand jury in
their presentment in 1813, let in the rain. Supplies of common necessaries,
such as have now been part of the furniture of every British gaol for many
years, were meagre or altogether absent. The rations of food were
notoriously inadequate, and so carelessly distributed, that many were left to
starve. So unjust and unequal was the system, that the allowance to
convicted criminals was better than that of the innocent debtor, and the
general insufficiency was such that it multiplied beyond all reason the
number of visitors, many of whom came merely as the purveyors of food to
their friends.
The prison allowances were eked out by the broken victuals generously
given by several eating-house keepers in the city, such as Messrs. Birch of
Cornhill and Messrs. Leach and Dollimore of Ludgate Hill. These were
fetched away in a large tub on a truck by a turnkey. Amongst the heap was
often the meat that had made turtle soup, which, when heated and stirred
together in a saucepan, was said to be very good eating. The bedding was
scanty; fuel and light had to be purchased out of prisoners’ private means;
clothing was issued but rarely, even to prisoners almost in nakedness, and
as a special charitable gift. Extortion was practised right and left. Garnish
continued to be demanded long after it had disappeared in other and better-
regulated prisons. The fees on reception and discharge must be deemed
exorbitant, when it is remembered the impoverished class who usually
crowded the gaol; and they were exacted to relieve a rich corporation from
paying for the maintenance of their own prison. This imposition of fees left
prisoners destitute on their discharge, without funds to support them in their
first struggle to recommence life, with ruined character, bad habits, and
often bad health contracted in the gaol. A further and a more iniquitous
method of extorting money was still practised, that of loading newly-arrived
prisoners until they paid certain fees. Ironing was still the rule, not only for

the convicted, but for those charged with felonies; only the misdemeanants
escaped. At the commencement of every sessions, such of the untried as had
purchased “easement” of irons were called up and re-fettered, preparatory
to their appearance in the Old Bailey. Irons were seldom removed from the
convicted until discharge; sometimes the wearer was declared medically
unfit, or he obtained release by long good conduct, or the faithful discharge
of some petty office, such as gatesman or captain of a ward. The irons
weighed from three to four pounds, but heavier irons, seven or eight
pounds’ weight, were imposed in case of misconduct; and when there had
been an attempt at escape, the culprit was chained down to the floor by
running a chain through his irons which prevented him from climbing to the
window of his cell. Among other excuses offered for thus manacling all
almost without exception, was that it was the best and safest method of
distinguishing a prisoner from a stranger and temporary visitor. Clothes or
prison uniform would not have served the purpose, for a disguise can be
rapidly and secretly put on, whereas irons cannot well be exchanged
without loss of time and attracting much attention.[46]
The unchecked admission of crowds of visitors to the felons’ as well as
the debtors’ side was another unmixed evil. By this means spirits, otherwise
unattainable and strictly prohibited, were smuggled into the gaol.
Searches[47] were made certainly, but they were too often superficial, or
they might be evaded by a trifling bribe. Hence the frequent cases of
drunkenness, of which no notice was taken, unless people grew riotous in
their cups, and attracted attention by their disorderly behaviour. Another
frightful consequence of this indiscriminate admission was the influx of
numbers of abandoned women, only a few of whom had the commendable
prudery to pass themselves off as the wives of prisoners. Any reputed, and
indeed any real, wife might spend the night in Newgate if she would pay the
shilling fee, commonly known as the “bad money,” a base payment which
might have done something towards increasing the prison receipts, had it
not been appropriated by the turnkey who winked at this evasion of the
rules. Among the daily visitors were members of the criminal classes still at
large, the thieves and burglars who carried on the active business of their
profession, from which their confederates were temporarily debarred. One
notorious character, while a prisoner awaiting transfer to the hulks, kept
open house, so to speak, and entertained daily within the walls a select party
of the most noted thieves in London. This delectable society enticed into

their set a clerk who had been imprisoned for fraud, and offered him half
the booty if he would give full information as to the transactions and
correspondence of his late employers. Owing to the facility of intercourse
between inside and outside, many crimes were doubtless hatched in
Newgate. Some of the worst and most extensive burglaries were planned
there. Forged notes had been fabricated, false money coined, and both
passed out in quantities to be circulated through the country. “I believe,”
says Mr. Bennet in the letter already largely quoted, “that there is no place
in the metropolis where more crimes are projected or where stolen property
is more secreted than in Newgate.”
These malpractices were fostered by the absence of all supervision and
the generally unbroken idleness. Although attempted partially at Bridewell,
and more systematically at the new Millbank penitentiary, but just open
(1816), the regular employment of prisoners had never yet been accepted as
a principle in the metropolitan prisons. Insuperable difficulties were still
supposed to stand in the way of any general employment of prisoners at
their trades. There was fear as to the unrestricted use of tools, limits of
space, the interference of the ill-disposed, who would neither work nor let
others do so, and the danger of losing material, raw or manufactured. Many
years were to elapse before these objections should be fairly met and
universally overcome. It was not strange, therefore, that the inmates of
Newgate should turn their unoccupied brains and idle hands to all manner
of mischief; that when they were not carousing, plotting, or scheming, they
should gamble with dice or cards, and play at bumble puppy or some other
disreputable game of chance.
The report of the Committee of the House of Commons painted so black
a picture of Newgate as then conducted, that the Corporation were roused in
very shame to undertake some kind of reform. The above-mentioned report
was ordered to be printed upon the 9th May. Upon the 29th July the same
year, the court of aldermen appointed a committee of its own body, assisted
by the town clerk, Mr. Dance, city surveyor, son to the architect of
Newgate, and Mr. Addison, keeper of Newgate, to make a visitation of the
gaols supposed to be the best managed, including those of Petworth and
Gloucester.[48] This committee was to compare allowances, examine rules,
and certify as to the condition of prisoners; also to make such proposals as
might appear salutary, and calculated to improve Newgate and the rest of
the city gaols.

This committee made its report in September the following year, and an
excellent report it is, so far as its recommendations are concerned. The
committee seems to have fully realized, even at this early date (1815), many
of the indispensable conditions of a model prison according to modern
ideas. It admitted the paramount necessity for giving every prisoner a
sleeping cell to himself, an amount of enlightenment which is hardly
general among European nations at this the latter end of the nineteenth
century,[49] several of which still fall far short of our English ideal, that all
prisoners should always be in separate cells by night, and those of short
sentences by day. It recommended day cells or rooms for regular labour,
which should be compulsory upon all transports and prisoners sentenced to
hard labour, the work being constant and suitable, with certain hours of
relaxation and for food and exercise. The personal cleanliness of all
prisoners was to be insisted upon; they should be made to wash at least
once a day, with the penalty of forfeiting the day’s allowance of food, an
increase of which the committee had recommended. The provision of more
baths was also suggested, and the daily sweeping out of the prison. The
clothes of prisoners arriving dirty, or in rags, should be fumigated before
worn in the gaol, but as yet no suggestion was made to provide prison
uniform. A laundry should be established, and a matron appointed on the
female side, where all the prisoners’ washing could be performed. Proper
hours for locking and unlocking prisoners should be insisted upon; a bell
should give notice thereof, and of meal-hours, working-hours, or of
escapes.
The committee took upon itself to lay down stringent rules for the
discipline of the prison. The gaoler should be required to visit every part
and see every prisoner daily; the chaplain should perform service, visit the
sick, instruct the prisoners, “give spiritual advice and administer religious
consolation” to all who might need them;[50] the surgeon should see all
prisoners, whether ill or well, once a week, and take general charge of the
infirmaries. All three, governor, chaplain, and surgeon, should keep
journals, which should be inspected periodically by the visiting magistrates.
It should be peremptorily forbidden to the keeper or any officer to make a
pecuniary profit out of the supplies of food, fuel, or other necessaries. No
prisoner should be allowed to obtain superior accommodation on the
payment of any fees. Fees indeed should be generally abolished, garnish
also. No prisoners should in future be ironed, except in cases of misconduct,

provided only that their security was not jeopardized, and dependent upon
the enforcement of another new rule, which recommended restrictions upon
the number of visitors admitted. No wine or beer should be in future
admitted into or sold in the gaol, except for the use of the debtors, or as
medical comforts for the infirmary. Drunkenness, if it ever occurred, should
be visited with severe punishment; gaming of all sorts should be
peremptorily forbidden under heavy pains and penalties. The feelings of the
condemned prisoners should no longer be outraged by their exposure in the
chapel, and the chapel should be rearranged, so that the various classes
might be seated separately, and so as not to see each other.
It will hardly be denied that these proposals went to the root of the
matter. Had they been accepted in their entirety, little fault could in future
have been found with the managers of Newgate. In common justice to
them, it must be admitted that immediate effect was given to all that could
be easily carried out. The state side ceased to exist, and the female prisoners
thus regained the space of which their quadrangle had been robbed. The
privileges of the master’s side also disappeared; fees were nominally
abolished, and garnish was scotched, although not yet killed outright. A
certain number of bedsteads were provided, and there was a slight increase
in the ration of bread. But here the recommendations touched at once upon
the delicate subject of expense, and it is clear that the committee hesitated
on this score. It made this too the excuse for begging the most important
issue of the whole question. The committee did not deny the superior
advantages offered by such prisons as Gloucester and Petworth, but it at
once deprecated the idea that the city could follow the laudable example
thus set in the provinces. “Were a metropolitan prison erected on the same
lines, with all the space not only for air and exercise, but for day rooms and
sleeping cells,” it would cover some thirty acres, and cost a great deal more
than the city, with the example of Whitecross Street prison before it, could
possibly afford. The committee does not seem to have yet understood that
Newgate could be only and properly replaced by a new gaol built on the
outskirts, as Holloway eventually was,[51] and permitted itself to be
altogether countered and checked in its efforts towards reform by the
prohibitory costliness of the land about Newgate. With the seeming
impossibility of extending the limits of the prison as it then stood, all
chances of classification and separation vanished, and the greatest evils
remained untouched. All the committee could do in this respect was to

throw the responsibility on others. It pointed out that the Government was
to blame for the overcrowding, and might diminish it if it chose. It was very
desirable that there should be a more speedy removal of transports from
Newgate to the ships. Again, there was the new Millbank penitentiary now
ready for occupation. Why not relieve Newgate by drawing more largely
upon the superior accommodation which Millbank offered?

CHAPTER III.

PHILANTHROPY IN NEWGATE.

Absence of religious and moral instruction in Newgate a hundred years ago—Chaplains not always
zealous—Unprofessional amateur enthusiasts minister to the prisoners—Christian Knowledge
Society—Silas Told, his life and work—Wesley leads him to prison visitation—Goes to Newgate
regularly—Chaplain opposes his visits—Attends the condemned to the gallows—Attends Mary
Edmondson—The gentlemen Highwaymen—Mrs. Brownrigg—Alexander Cruden of the
‘Concordance’ also visits Newgate—More precise account of a neglectful Chaplain—Dr. Forde—
His hatred of amateur preachers—In his element in the chair of a ‘free-and-easy’—Private
philanthropy active—Various societies formed—Prison schools—The female side the most
disgraceful part of the prison—Mrs. Fry’s first visit—Her second visit—Awful description of
interior of gaol—Ill-treatment of female prisoners—Their irons—Where Mrs. Fry commenced—
The School—The Matron—Work obtained—Rules framed—Rapid improvement of Newgate—
Female prison reformed—Publicity follows—Newgate becomes a show.

AMONG the many drawbacks from which the inmates of Newgate suffered
through the eighteenth and the early part of the nineteenth century, was the
absence of proper religious and moral instruction. The value of the
ministrations of the ordinary, who was the official ghostly adviser, entirely
depended upon his personal qualities. Now and again he was an earnest and
devoted man, to whom the prisoners might fully open their hearts. More
often he was careless and indifferent, satisfied to earn his salary by the
slightest and most perfunctory discharge of his sacred duties. There were
ordinaries whose fame rested rather upon their powers of digestion than in
polemics or pulpit oratory. The Newgate chaplain had to say grace at city
banquets, and was sometimes called upon to eat three consecutive dinners
without rising from the table. One in particular was noted for his skill in
compounding a salad, another for his jovial companionship. But the
ordinary took life easy, and beyond conducting the services, did little work.
Only when executions were imminent was he especially busy. It behoved
then to collect matter for his account of the previous life and the misdeeds
of the condemned, with their demeanour at Tyburn, and this, according to
contemporary records, led him to get all the information he could from the
malefactors who passed through his hands. In the history of the press yard
there is an account of the proceedings of the chaplain, Mr. Smith, which
may be somewhat over-coloured, but which has the appearance of truth. It
was the ordinary’s custom to give interviews in his private closet to those
condemned to death, and cross-examine them closely. One day a young
fellow was brought before him, to whom he said at once, “Well, boy, now is
the time to unbosom thyself to me. Thou hast been a great sabbath-breaker
in thy time I warrant thee? The neglect of going to church regularly has
brought thee under these unhappy circumstances.” “Not I, good sir,” was

the reply; “I never neglected going to some church, if I was in health,
morning and evening every Lord’s day.” The lad told truth, for his business
took him to such places of resort for the better carrying on his trade, which
was that of a pickpocket. Mr. Smith was not to be done out of his
confession. “No sabbath-breaker? then thou hast been an abominable
drunkard?” This the criminal denied, declaring that he had always had a
mortal aversion to strong drinks. The chaplain continued to press the
criminal, but could find that he had been guilty of nothing more than
thieving, and as this was a topic he could not enlarge upon in his pamphlet,
he dismissed the lad, to be entered in his account as an obstinate, case-
hardened rogue.
But while the official lacked zeal or religious fervour, there were not
wanting others more earnest and enthusiastic to add their unprofessional but
devoted efforts to the half-hearted ministrations of the ordinary of Newgate.
Towards the end of the seventeenth century, when the Society for the
Promotion of Christian Knowledge was first formed, Dr. Bray and other
members visited Newgate, and made its inmates their especial care for a
time. A prominent figure in the philanthropic annals of Newgate a little later
is that of Silas Told, who devoted many years of his life to the spiritual
needs of the prisoners. Told’s career is full of peculiar interest. He was a
pious child; both father and mother were religious folk, and brought him up
carefully. According to his own memoirs, when quite an infant he and his
sister Dulcibella were wont to wander into the woods and fields to converse
about “God and happiness.” Told passed through many trials and
vicissitudes in his early years. At thirteen he went to sea as an apprentice,
and suffered much ill-usage. He made many voyages to the West Indies and
to the Guinea coast, being a horrified and unwilling witness of some of the
worst phases of the slave trade. He fell into the hands of piratical Spaniards,
was cast away on a reef, saved almost by a miracle, last of all was pressed
on board a man-of-war. Here, on board H.M.S. ‘Phœnix,’ his religious
tendencies were strengthened by a pious captain, and presently he married
and left the sea for ever. After this he became a schoolmaster in Essex, then
a clerk and book-keeper in London. Here he came under the influence of
John Wesley, and although predisposed against the Methodists, he was
profoundly impressed by their leader’s preaching. While listening to a
sermon by John Wesley on the suddenness of conversion, Told heard

another voice say to him, “This is the truth,” and from that time forth he
became a zealous Methodist.
It was Wesley who led him to prison visitation. He was at that time
schoolmaster of the Foundry school, and his call to his long and devoted
labours in Newgate were brought about in this wise. “In the year 1744,” to
quote his own words, “I attended the children one morning at the five
o’clock preaching, when Mr. Wesley took his text out of the twenty-fifth
chapter of St. Matthew. When he read ‘I was sick and in prison, and ye
visited me not,’ I was sensible of my negligence in never visiting the
prisoners during the course of my life, and was filled with horror of mind
beyond expression. This threw me well-nigh into a state of despondency, as
I was totally unacquainted with the measures requisite to be pursued for that
purpose. However, the gracious God, two or three days after, sent a
messenger to me in the school, who informed me of the malefactors that
were under sentence of death, and would be glad of any of our friends who
could go and pray with them. The messenger, whose name was Sarah
Peters, gave me to understand that they were all much awakened, and that
one of them, John Lancaster, was converted, and full of the grace of God. In
consequence of this reviving information, I committed my school without
an hour’s delay to my trusty usher, and went with Sarah Peters to Newgate,
where we had admittance to the cell wherein they were confined.”
Silas Told found Lancaster in a state of religious exaltation, thanking
God that he had been sent to Newgate, and praying while they knocked his
irons off, till even the attendant sheriff shed tears.

Rev. Mr. Whitfield Preaching on Kennington Common

Silas accompanied the condemned men to Tyburn, and saw the gallows
for the first time. He tells us that he went not without much shame and fear,
because he clearly perceived the greater part of the spectators considered
him as one of the sufferers. Lancaster, on arriving at the fatal tree, lifted up
his eyes thereto, and said, “Blessed be God,” then prayed extemporary in a
very excellent manner, and the others behaved with great discretion.
Lancaster was friendless, and no one came forward to give the body
interment; so the “surgeon’s mob” secured it, and carried it over to
Paddington for dissection. Scarcely had it disappeared before a party of
sailors came on the scene and demanded what had become of it. They
followed the “surgeon’s mob,” recovered the body, and carried it in state
through Islington and Hounsditch till they were tired. Then they dropped it
upon the first doorstep. The story ends most dramatically, and Told declares
that an old woman, disturbed by the uproar, came down and recognized in
John Lancaster’s corpse the body of her own son.
After this first visit Told went regularly to Newgate. He describes the
place, twenty-one years later, but still remembered vividly, as “such an
emblem of the infernal pit as he never saw before.” However, he struggled

bravely on, having a constant pressure upon his mind “to stand up for God
in the midst of them,” and praying much “for wisdom and fortitude.” He
preached as often as he was permitted to both felons and debtors. But for
the first few years, when attending the malefactors, he met with so many
repulses from the keeper and ordinary, as well as from the prisoners
themselves, that he was often greatly discouraged. “But notwithstanding I
more vehemently pressed through all,” becoming the more resolute and
“taking no denial.” His most bitter opponent, as was not unnatural, was the
ordinary, Mr. Taylor, who would constantly station himself on Sunday
mornings a few doors from Newgate, and wait there patiently for a couple
of hours or more to obstruct his entrance, at the same time forbidding the
turnkeys to give him admittance. Told’s persistence generally got him
through, so that most Sunday mornings he had an opportunity of preaching
on the debtors’ side to a congregation of forty or more. His influence among
the debtors was so great that they readily formed themselves, at his request,
into a society or organization, bound by rules and regulations to strict
religious observances. In this he was ably seconded by the
“circumspection” of two or three prisoners who highly approved of his
proposals, and exercised a close watch on the others, whom they would not
“suffer to live in any outward sin.” For a considerable time the debtors paid
regular attention to his preachings and the meetings of the society. After
some time, however, the ordinary “raised a great tumult,” and managed ever
after to shut Silas Told out from that side of the prison.
Told was not to be repressed entirely. In spite of all opposition, he still
visited the felons, among whom there was a blessed work, especially among
the condemned malefactors. He frequently preached during the space which
intervened between sentence and execution; he constantly visited the sick in
all parts of the prison, which he tells us he had “reason to believe was made
a blessing to many of their souls.” His zeal was so great that he spared no
pains to do all the good in his power, “embracing every opportunity, both in
hearing and speaking, so that in process of time he preached in every
prison, as well as in every workhouse, in and about London, and frequently
travelled to almost every town within twelve miles of the metropolis.”
Silas Told has left us several of his personal experiences in attending
upon the condemned. One of the most interesting cases is that of Mary
Edmonson, who was convicted of murdering her aunt, on slight evidence,
and whose guilt seems doubtful. When the time of her departure for Tyburn

approached, Silas begged the sheriff to let him visit her as soon as possible.
The sheriff asked him if he was a clergyman. “No, sir,” replied Told. “Are
you a Dissenting minister?” “I answered him ‘No.’ ” “What are you then?”
he went on. Silas replied that he was one who preached the gospel, and who
wished to be the means of bringing the prisoner to confession. The sheriff
then bade Told seize hold of his bridle-rein, and go by his side to the place
of execution; although he cautioned him against the attempt, there being a
riotous mob all along the streets, who were fiercely incensed against the
poor condemned woman. “As we were proceeding on the road,”—let Silas
tell his own story,—“the sheriff’s horse being close to the cart, I looked at
her from under the horse’s bridle, and said, ‘My dear, look to Jesus.’ This
salutary advice quickened her spirit, insomuch that although she did not
look about her before, yet she turned herself round to me and joyfully
answered, ‘Sir, I bless God I can look to Jesus for my comfort!’ This
produced a pleasant smile on her countenance, which when the sons of
violence perceived, they d—d her in a shameful manner; this was
accompanied with a vengeful shout, ‘See how bold she is! See how the ----
laughs!’
“At length we came to the gallows, where many officers were stationed
on horseback, besides numbers more on foot, furnished with constables’
staves. When the cart was backed under the gallows, a very corpulent man
trod on my foot with such weight that I really thought he had taken it quite
off; however, the sheriff soon cleared the way, and formed an arrangement
of constables round the cart, then directed some of them to put me into it, in
order that I might be of all the service to the malefactor which lay in my
power; the sheriff himself standing behind the cart, the better to avail
himself of my discourses with her. When she was tied up I began to address
her nearly in the same words I did at the Peacock, pressing upon her an
acknowledgment of the murder in the most solemn manner, but she
declared her innocence in the presence of the sheriff. I then interrogated her.
‘Did you not commit the fact? Had you no concern therein? Were you not
interested in the murder?’ She answered, ‘I am as clear of the whole affair
as I was the day my mother brought me into the world.’ The sheriff on
hearing these words shed plenty of tears, and said, ‘Good God! it is a
second Coleman’s case!’ This circumstance likewise brought tears from
many persons who heard her. When I was getting out of the cart the
executioner put the handkerchief over her eyes, but she quickly moved it

away, and, addressing herself to the multitude, begged them to pray that
God would bring to light, when she was departed, the cause of the
assassination, saying she had no doubt but the prayers of such persons
would be heard; but repeated her innocence, solemnly declaring that she
was as ignorant of the crime for which she was going to suffer as at the day
of her birth; and added also, ‘I do not lay anything to the charge of my
Maker, He has an undoubted right to take me out of this world as seemeth
Him good; and although I am clear of this murder, yet I have sinned against
Him in many various instances; but I bless God He hath forgiven me all my
sins.’ Her kinsman then came up into the cart, and would fain have saluted
her; but she mildly turned her face aside, strongly suspecting him to be the
assassin.
“After her kinsman had gone out of the cart, the executioner a second
time was putting the handkerchief over her face, when she again turned it
aside, looking at the sheriff, and saying, ‘I think it cruel that none is
suffered to pray by me.’ The sheriff then desired me, for God’s sake, to go a
second time into the cart and render my prayers with her, which when
finished, she began to pray extempore, and in a most excellent manner.
When she had concluded her prayer, the executioner performed his part, and
being turned off, her body dropped against my right shoulder, nor did she
once struggle or move, but was as still as if she had hung for three hours.”
One other case I will extract from Silas Told, as it possesses some
peculiar features. It is that of the amateur highwaymen who took to the road
as a fitting frolic to end a day’s pleasure. Messrs. Morgan, Whalley, Brett,
and Dupree, and two more, had dined freely at Chelmsford to celebrate an
election. Having “glutted themselves with immoderate eating and
drinking,” they went out on the highway to rob the first person they came
across. This happened to be an Essex farmer, whom they stripped of all he
had. The farmer got help, followed them into Chelmsford, where they were
captured, sent to London, tried at the Old Bailey, and cast for death. They
were all of good station—Brett the son of a clergyman in Dublin, Whalley a
man of fortune, Dupree a gentleman, and Morgan an officer on board one of
His Majesty’s ships of war. The last was engaged to Lady E—— Howard, a
daughter of the Duke of Norfolk, who frequently visited Mr. Morgan in
Newgate, Told being generally present at their interviews. Lady E—— went
daily to the king, as did many other persons of great influence, to beg Mr.
Morgan’s life; but His Majesty steadfastly rejected all petitions, stating that

to do so would be to show partiality and a want of justice. But the devoted
woman would not forego all hope, and, the morning before the execution,
again appeared, and fell upon her knees at the king’s feet. “My lady,” said
His Majesty, “there is no end to your importunity. I will spare his life upon
condition that he is not acquainted therewith till he arrives at the place of
execution.” This was accordingly carried. Brett, Whalley, and Dupree were
actually tied up to the gallows. Morgan and two others followed in a second
cart, when the sheriff rode up with the respite for Morgan.
“It is hard to express”—I again quote from Told—“the sudden alarm this
made among the multitude; and when I turned round and saw one of the
prisoners out of the cart, falling to the ground, he having fainted away at the
sudden news, I was seized with terror, as I thought it was a rescue rather
than a reprieve; but when I beheld Morgan put into a coach, and perceived
that Lady E. H. was seated therein, my fear was at an end.
“As soon as Morgan was gone, a venerable gentleman, addressing
himself to Dupree, begged him to look steadfastly to God, in whose
presence he would shortly appear, and hoped the mercy his companion had
received would have no bad effect upon him. Dupree, with all calmness and
composure of mind, said, ‘Sir, I thank God that him they reprieved; it
doesn’t by any means affect me.’ This gave the gentleman much
satisfaction. When prayers were ended, I addressed each of them in the
most solemn words I was capable of, which I hope was not in vain, as they
all appeared entirely resigned to their fate. Brett earnestly craved the
prayers of the multitude, and conjured them all to take warning by the
untimely end of the three objects of their present attention. When they were
turned off, and the mob nearly dispersed, I hastened back to Newgate, and
there seriously conversed with Morgan, who, in consequence of the
unexpected reprieve, was scarcely recovered.”
Silas Told continued his labours for many years. In 1767 he visited the
notorious Mrs. Brownrigg, who was sentenced to be hanged for whipping
her servant-maid to death, and whom he accompanied to the gallows. His
death occurred in 1779. He lived to hear of Howard’s philanthropic
exertions, and to see the introduction of some small measure of prison
reform.
While Silas Told was thus engaged, another but a more erratic and
eccentric philanthropist paid constant visits to Newgate. This was

Alexander Cruden, the well-known, painstaking compiler of the
‘Concordance.’ For a long time he came daily to the gaol, to preach and
instruct the prisoners in the gospel, rewarding the most diligent and
attentive with money, till he found that the cash thus disbursed was often
spent in drink the moment his back was turned. He did more good than this.
Through Mr. Cruden’s solicitations a sentence of death upon a forger,
Richard Potter, was commuted to one of transportation.
More precise details of the manner in which a Newgate ordinary
interpreted his trust will be found in the evidence of the Rev. Brownlow
Forde, LL.D., before the committee of 1814. Dr. Forde took life pretty easy.
Had a prisoner sent for him, he told the committee, he might have gone, but
as no one did send, except they were sick and thought themselves at death’s
door, he confined his ministrations to the condemned, whom he visited
twice a week in the day room of the press yard, or daily after the order for
execution had arrived. He repudiated the notion that he had anything to do
with the state of morals of the gaol. He felt no obligation to instruct
youthful prisoners, or attend to the spiritual needs of the mere children so
often thrown into Newgate. He never went to the infirmary unless sent for,
and did not consider it his duty to visit the sick, and often knew nothing of a
prisoner’s illness unless he was warned to attend the funeral. Among other
reasons, he said that as the turnkeys were always busy, there was no one to
attend him. While the chaplain was thus careless and apathetic, the services
he conducted were little likely to be edifying or decorous. The most
disgraceful scenes were common in the prison chapel. As the prisoners
trooped into the galleries they shouted and halloed to their friends in the
body of the church. Friends interchanged greetings, and “How d’ye do,
Sall?” was answered by “Gallows well, Conkey Beau,” as the men
recognized their female acquaintances, and were recognized in turn. The
congregation might be pretty quiet after the chaplain had made his
appearance, but more often it was disorderly from first to last. Any disposed
to behave well were teased and laughed at by others. Unrestricted
conversation went on, accompanied by such loud yawning, laughing, or
coughing as almost impeded the service. No one in authority attempted to
preserve order; the gatesmen, themselves prisoners, might expostulate, but
the turnkeys who were present ignored any disturbance until reminded of
their duty by the chaplain. The keeper never attended service. It was
suggested to him that he might have a pew in the chapel with a private

entrance to it from his own house, but nothing came of the proposal. It was
not incumbent upon the prisoners, except those condemned to death, to
attend chapel. Sometimes it was crowded, sometimes there was hardly a
soul. In severe weather the place, in which there was no fire, was nearly
empty. It was very lofty, very cold, and the prisoners, ill clad, did not care to
shiver through the service. On “curiosity days,” those of the condemned
sermon, more came, including debtors and visitors from outside, who
thronged to see the demeanour of the wretched convicts under the painful
circumstances already described. The service must have been conducted in
a very slovenly and irreverent manner. Dr. Forde had no clerk, unless it
chanced that some one in the condemned pew knew how to read. If not,
there were sometimes no responses, and the “whole service was apt to be
thrown into confusion.”[52]
A man who did so little himself could hardly be expected to view with
much favour the undisciplined efforts of amateurs and outsiders. In his
opinion the prisoners were only harassed and worried by the Dissenting
ministers and others who “haunted the gaol.” Dr. Forde said they (the
prisoners) did not like it. “It was not to be expected of them, with their
habits, that they should be crammed with preaching and prayers.” They
bore with the visitation, however, hoping to get from the preacher a loaf, or
money, or bread and cheese; although the tables were occasionally turned
on them, and the visitor, according to Dr. Forde, “would eat up the mutton
chop and drink the beer of some well-to-do prisoner, then go to prayers, and
depart.” These ministers he styled Methodist preachers, or “clergymen who
affect to be methodistical preachers,” although one, according to him, was a
“raggedly-dressed Thames lighterman,” who presumed to come in and
expound the Scriptures. Dr. Forde makes no mention of Mr. Baker, who
must have been a constant visitor in his day—a “white-headed old man”
who was in frequent attendance upon the prisoners when Mrs. Fry began
her labours, and who had for years “devoted much time and attention to
unostentatious but invaluable visits in Newgate.”[53]
Dr. Forde seems to have been more in his element when taking the chair
at a public-house ‘free-and-easy.’ In the ‘Book for a Rainy Day,’ already
quoted, Mr. Smith gives us an account of a visit paid to Dr. Forde at a
public-house in Hatton Garden. “Upon entering the club-room, we found
the Doctor most pompously seated in a superb masonic chair, under a
stately crimson canopy placed between the windows. The room was

clouded with smoke, whiffed to the ceiling, which gave me a better idea of
what I had heard of the ‘Black Hole of Calcutta’ than any place I had seen.
There were present at least a hundred associates of every denomination.”
It is consoling to find that while officials slumbered, private
philanthropy was active, and had been in some cases for years. Various
societies and institutions had been set on foot to assist and often replace
public justice in dealing with criminals. The Marine Society grew out of a
subscription started by Justices Fielding and Welch, in 1756, for the purpose
of clothing vagrant and friendless lads and sending them on board the fleet.
The Philanthropic Society had been established in 1789 by certain
benevolent persons, to supply a home for destitute boys and girls, and this
admirable institution steadily grew and prospered. In 1794 it moved to
larger premises, and in 1817 it had an income of £6000 a year, partly from
subscriptions and legacies, partly from the profit on labour executed by its
inmates.[54] In 1816 another body of well-meaning people, moved by the
“alarming increase of juvenile delinquency in the metropolis,” formed a
society to investigate its causes, inquire into the individual cases of boys
actually under sentence, and afford such relief upon release as might appear
deserved or likely to prevent a relapse into crime. The members of this
society drew up a list containing seven hundred names of the friends and
associates of boys in Newgate, all of whom they visited and sought to
reform. They went further, and seriously discussed the propriety of
establishing a special penitentiary for juveniles, a scheme which was never
completely carried out. Another institution was the Refuge for the Destitute,
which took in boys and girls on their discharge from prison, to teach them
trades and give them a fair start in life. There were also the Magdalen
Hospital and the Female Penitentiary, both of which did good work
amongst depraved women.
Matters had improved somewhat in Newgate after the report of the
committee in 1814, at least as regards the juveniles. A school had been
established, over which the new ordinary, Mr. Cotton, who about this time
succeeded Dr. Forde, presided, and in which he took a great interest. The
chaplain was in communication with the Philanthropic and other
institutions, and promising cases were removed to them. The boys were
kept as far as possible apart from the men, but not at first from one another.
Hence in the one long room they occupied and used for all purposes, eating,
drinking, and sleeping, the elder and more vitiated boys were still able to

exercise a baneful influence over the young and innocent. More space
became available by the removal of the debtors to Whitecross Street, and
then the boys were lodged according to categories in four different rooms.
Mr. Cotton believed that the boys benefited morally from the instruction
and care they received. This juvenile school was one bright spot in the
prevailing darkness of Newgate at that particular time. Another and a still
more remarkable amelioration in the condition of the prisoners was soon to
attract universal attention. The great and good work accomplished by that
noble woman Mrs. Fry on the female side of Newgate forms an epoch in
prison history, and merits a particular description.
Bad as were the other various courts and so called “sides” in Newgate
prison, the quadrangle appropriated to the females was far worse. Its foul
and degraded condition had attracted the sympathies of Elizabeth Fry as
early as 1813. The winter had been unusually severe, and Mrs. Fry had been
induced by several Friends, particularly by William Forster, to visit
Newgate and endeavour to alleviate the sufferings of the female prisoners.
The space allotted to the women was at that time still curtailed by the
portion given over to the state side.[55] They were limited to two wards and
two cells, an area of about one hundred and ninety-two superficial yards in
all, into which, at the time of Mrs. Fry’s visit, some three hundred women
with their children were crowded, all classes together, felon and
misdemeanant, tried and untried; the whole under the superintendence of an
old man and his son. They slept on the floor, without so much as a mat for
bedding. Many were very nearly naked, others were in rags; some desperate
from want of food, some savage from drink, foul in language, still more
recklessly depraved in their habits and behaviour. Everything was filthy
beyond description. The smell of the place was quite disgusting. The keeper
himself, Mr. Newman, was reluctant to go amongst them. He strove hard to
dissuade Mrs. Fry from entering the wards, and failing in that, begged her at
least to leave her watch in his office, assuring her that not even his presence
would prevent its being torn from her. Mrs. Fry’s own account fully
endorses all this. “All I tell thee is a faint picture of the reality; the filth, the
closeness of the rooms, the ferocious manners and expressions of the
women towards each other, and the abandoned wickedness which
everything bespoke, are quite indescribable.” “One act, the account of
which I received from another quarter, marks the degree of wretchedness to

which they were reduced at that time. Two women were seen in the act of
stripping a dead child for the purpose of clothing a living one.”[56]
Mrs. Fry must have gone again, for she wrote under date Feb. 16th, 1813
—“Yesterday we were some hours in Newgate with the poor female felons,
attending to their outward necessities; we had been twice previously. Before
we went away dear Anna Buxton uttered a few words in supplication, and
very unexpectedly to myself I did also. I heard weeping, and I thought they
appeared much tendered. A very solemn quiet was observed; it was a
striking scene, with the poor people around in their deplorable condition.”
Mrs. Fry’s charity extended to the gift of clothing, for it is recorded in her
memoirs that many members of her domestic circle had long a vivid
recollection of the “green baize garments,” and their pleasure in assisting to
prepare them.
Nearly four years elapsed before Elizabeth Fry resumed her visits.
Newgate and what she had seen there had no doubt made a deep impression
on her mind, but a long illness and family afflictions had prevented her
from giving her philanthropic yearnings full play. She appears to have
recommenced her visits about Christmas 1816, and on Feb. 16th, 1817,
there is an entry in her journal to the effect that she had been “lately much
occupied in forming a school in Newgate for the children of the poor
prisoners, as well as the young criminals.” It was in this way that she struck
at the hearts of these poor degraded wretches, who were only too eager to
save their children from a life of crime. “The proposal was received,” Mrs.
Fry says, “even by the most abandoned with tears of joy.” The three
intervening years between 1813 and 1816 had brought no improvement in
the female side. Its inmates—the very scum of the town—were filthy in
their habits and disgusting in their persons. Mrs. Fry tells us she found the
railings in the inner yard crowded with half-naked women, struggling
together for the front situations with the most boisterous violence, and
begging with the utmost vociferation. As double gratings had now been
fixed at some distance apart to prevent close communication between
prisoners and their visitors, the women had fastened wooden spoons to the
end of long sticks, which they thrust across the space as they clamoured for
alms. Mrs. Fry tells us that she felt as if she were going into a den of wild
beasts, and that she well recollects quite shuddering when the door closed
upon her, and she was locked in with such a herd of novel and desperate
companions. The women, according to another eye-witness, sat about the

yard on the stones, squalid in attire, ferocious in aspect. On this occasion a
woman rushed out from the ward “yelling like a wild beast;” she made the
circuit of the yard, brandishing her arms and tearing the caps or coverings
from the heads of the other women. In spite of these terrible scenes, the
ladies, several Friends having joined with Mrs. Fry, continued to give their
attention to the school. “It was in our visits to the school,” she afterwards
observed, when giving evidence before the Parliamentary committee of
1818, “where some of us attended every day, that we were witnesses of the
dreadful proceedings that went forward on the female side of the prison; the
begging, swearing, gaming, fighting, singing, dancing, dressing up in men’s
clothes; the scenes are too bad to be described, so that we did not think it
suitable to admit young persons with us.” This awful place had long been
aptly entitled “Hell above ground.”
It was not strange that these miserable women should be absolutely
unsexed. They were often subjected to brutal ill-treatment even before their
arrival at Newgate. Many were brought to the prison almost without
clothes. If coming from a distance, as in the case of transports lodged in
Newgate until embarkation, they were almost invariably ironed, and often
cruelly so. One lady saw the female prisoners from Lancaster Castle arrive,
not merely handcuffed, but with heavy irons on their legs, which had caused
swelling and inflammation. Others wore iron-hoops round their legs and
arms, and were chained to each other. On the journey these poor souls could
not get up or down from the coach without the whole of them being
dragged together. A woman travelled from Cardigan with an iron hoop
round her ankle, and fainted when it was removed. This woman’s story was,
that during a long imprisonment she had worn an iron hoop round her waist,
a second round her leg above the knee, a third at the ankle, and all these
connected by chains. In the waist hoop were two bolts or fastenings, in
which her hands were confined at night when she went to bed. Her bed was
only of straw. These wretched and ill-used creatures might be forgiven if
they at times broke out into rebellion. For a long time it was the practice
with the female transports to riot previous to their departure from Newgate,
breaking windows, furniture, or whatever came in their reach. Their
outrageous conduct continued all the way from the gaol to the water-side,
whither they were conveyed in open waggons, noisy and disorderly to the
last, amidst the jeers and shouts of the assembled crowds.

Mrs. Fry, as I have said, endeavoured first to form a school. For this
purpose an unoccupied room was set apart by the authorities. Although
looking upon her experiment as hopeless, she received cordial support from
the sheriffs, the governor, Mr. Newman, and the ordinary of Newgate, Mr.
Cotton. The prisoners selected from among themselves a schoolmistress,
Mary Connor by name, who had been committed for stealing a watch, and
“who proved eminently qualified for her task.” The school, which was for
children only and young persons under twenty-five, prospered, and by
degrees the heroic band of ladies were encouraged to greater efforts. The
conduct of the prisoners, their entreaties not to be excluded from the
benefits of the school, inspired Mrs. Fry with confidence, and she resolved
to attempt the introduction of order, industry, and religious feeling into
Newgate. In April 1817 eleven members of the Society of Friends and
another lady, the wife of a clergyman, formed themselves into “an
association for the improvement of the female prisoners in Newgate.”[57]
These devoted persons gave themselves up entirely to their self-imposed
task. With no interval of relaxation, and with but few intermissions from the
call of other and more imperious duties, they lived among the prisoners.[58]
They arrived, in fact, at the hour of unlocking, and spent the whole day in
the prison.
The more crying needs of the Newgate female prison at that date are
indicated in a memorandum found among Mrs. Fry’s papers. It was greatly
in need of room, she said. The women should be under the control and
supervision of female, and not, as heretofore, of male officers. The number
of visitors should be greatly curtailed, and all communications between
prisoners and their friends should take place at stated times, under special
rules. The prisoners should not be dependent on their friends for food or
clothing, but should have a sufficiency of both from the authorities.
Employment should be a part of their punishment, and be provided for them
by Government. They might work together in company, but should be
separated at night according to classes, under a monitor. Religious
instruction should be more closely considered. It was to supply these needs
that the committee devoted its efforts, the ladies boldly promising that if a
matron could be found who would engage never to leave the prison day or
night, they would find employment for the prisoners and the necessary
funds until the city could be induced to meet the expense.

The matron was found, and the first prison matron appointed, an elderly
respectable woman, who proved competent, and discharged her duties with
fidelity. Mrs. Fry next sought the countenance and support of the governor
and chaplain, both of whom met her at her husband’s house to listen to her
views and proposals. Mr. Cotton, the ordinary, was not encouraging; he
frankly told her that “this, like many other useful and benevolent designs
for the improvement of Newgate, would inevitably fail.” Mr. Newman,
however, bade her not despair; “but he has since confessed that when he
came to reflect on the subject, and especially upon the character of the
prisoners, he could not see even the possibility of success. Both, however,
promised their warmest co-operation.” Mrs. Fry next saw one of the
sheriffs, asking him to obtain a salary for the matron, and a room in the
prison for the Ladies’ Committee. This sheriff, Mr. Bridges, was willing to
help her if his colleagues and the Corporation agreed, “but told her that his
concurrence or that of the city would avail her but little—the concurrence
of the women themselves was indispensable; and that it was in vain to
expect such untamed and turbulent spirits would submit to the regulations
of a woman armed with no legal authority, and unable to inflict any
punishment.” Nevertheless, the two sheriffs met Mrs. Fry at Newgate one
Sunday afternoon. The women, seventy in number, were assembled, and
asked whether they were prepared to submit to the new rules. All “fully and
unanimously” agreed to abide by them, to the surprise of the sheriffs, who
doubted their submitting to such restraints. Upon this the sheriffs addressed
the prisoners, telling them that the scheme had official support; then turning
to Mrs. Fry, one of the two magistrates said, “Well, ladies, you see your
materials.”
The next business was to obtain work. It had occurred to Mrs. Fry that
the manufacture of clothing for Botany Bay would be a suitable sort of
employment, and she accordingly called upon the city firm, Messrs.
Richard Dixon and Co., of Fenchurch Street, who had hitherto supplied
these articles. She told them plainly that she was seeking to deprive them of
a part of their trade, whereupon they magnanimously altogether
relinquished it, feeling loth “to obstruct her laudable designs.” The work
obtained, the work-room was next prepared. The sheriffs sent in carpenters,
and the old prison laundry was speedily cleaned, whitewashed, and got
ready; after which Mrs. Fry assembled all the convicted prisoners, told them
her views and hopes, read them her proposed rules, which, as she did not

come among them with “any absolute or authoritative pretensions,” should
be put to the vote. The women present voluntarily subscribed to all,
although they were stringent, and aimed at the reform of evil and probably
long-cherished habits. These rules need not be inserted here at length. It will
suffice to say that they laid down the principle of constant employment at
knitting, needlework, or so forth; that begging, swearing, gambling,
quarrelling, and immoral conversation were forbidden; that the women
should submit themselves to their monitors, elected by themselves, to the
yard-keeper, similarly elected, and to the matron; that personal cleanliness,
a quiet, orderly demeanour, and silence at the work-tables should be
incumbent on all.
These rules were not only adopted readily, but strictly observed. In one
month a complete transformation had taken place in the women. At first
Mrs. Fry had wished to keep this gratifying result a secret, but it was
thought expedient to report progress to the Corporation, so that the new
system might be approved and established by the authority of the city. On a
day fixed the Lord Mayor, accompanied by the sheriffs and several
aldermen, attended at Newgate, and saw with their own eyes the remarkable
change effected in so short a time. The daily routine went on before them
exactly as usual. The prisoners assembled; one of the ladies read a chapter
in the Bible, then the women proceeded quietly to their work. “Their
attention during the time of reading, their orderly and sober deportment,
their decent dress, the absence of anything like tumult, noise, or contention,
the obedience and respect showed by them, and the cheerfulness exhibited
in their countenance and manners, conspired to excite the astonishment and
admiration of their visitors. Many of these knew Newgate, had visited it a
few months before, and had not forgotten the painful impressions made by a
scene exhibiting perhaps the very utmost limits of misery and guilt.”[59] The
city magistrates at once accepted the results achieved. Mrs. Fry’s rules were
adopted into the prison system, power was conferred on the ladies to punish
the refractory, and the salary of the matron was incorporated with the
regular expenses of the prison.
The evidence of a gentleman who visited Newgate within a fortnight of
the adoption of the new rules may fitly be added here. He went one day to
call on Mrs. Fry at the prison, and was conducted to the women’s side. “On
my approach,” he says, “no loud or dissonant sounds or angry voices
indicated that I was about to enter a place which I was credibly assured had

long had for one of its titles that of ‘Hell above ground.’ The court-yard into
which I was admitted, instead of being peopled with beings scarcely human,
blaspheming, fighting, tearing each other’s hair, or gaming with a filthy
pack of cards for the very clothes they wore, which often did not suffice
even for decency, presented a scene where stillness and propriety reigned. I
was conducted by a

Entrance to Mrs. Fry’s Ward.

decently-dressed person, the newly-appointed yards-woman, to the door of
a ward where at the head of a long table sat a lady belonging to the Society
of Friends. She was reading aloud to about sixteen women prisoners, who
were engaged in needlework around it. Each wore a clean-looking blue
apron and bib, with a ticket having a number on it suspended from her neck
by a red tape. They all rose on my entrance, curtsied respectfully, and then
at a signal given resumed their seats and employments. Instead of a scowl,
leer, or ill-suppressed laugh, I observed upon their countenances an air of
self-respect and gravity, a sort of consciousness of their improved character,

and the altered position in which they were placed. I afterwards visited the
other wards, which were the counterparts of the first.”
The efforts of the ladies, which had been at first concentrated upon the
convicted, were soon directed also upon the untried. These still continued in
a deplorable state, quarrelling and disorderly, bolder and more reckless
because they were in doubt as to their future fate. Unhappily the same
measure of success did not wait upon the attempt on this side. Many of
these women counted upon an early release, and would not take heartily to
work, although when they did they were “really and essentially improved.”
Nor could it be expected that the new régime could be established without
occasional insubordination and some backsliding. The rules were
sometimes broken. Spirits had been introduced more than once; six or seven
cases of drunkenness had occurred. But the women were careful not to
break out before the ladies; if they swore, it was out of hearing, and
although they still played cards, it was when the ladies’ backs were turned.
Mrs. Fry told the Parliamentary committee how she expostulated with the
women when she found they still gambled, and how she impressed upon
them, “if it were true that there were cards in the prison,” that she should
consider it a proof of their regard if they would have the candour and
kindness to bring her their packs. By and by a gentle tap came at her door as
she sat alone with the matron, and a trembling woman entered to surrender
her forbidden cards; another and another followed, till Mrs. Fry had soon
five packs of cards in her possession. The culprits fully expected reproof,
but Mrs. Fry assured them that their fault was fully condoned, and, much to
their surprise, rewarded them for their spontaneous good feeling. This
seems to have been in the ascendant on the whole, and at the end of the first
year it was satisfactorily proved to competent judges, the past and present
Lord Mayor, the sheriffs, gaolers, and various grand juries, the ordinary, and
others, that an extraordinary change for the better had shown itself in the
conduct of the females.
The work done in Newgate soon obtained much publicity, to the
undoubted and manifest distaste of those who had accomplished it. It was
first noticed in the newspapers by the well-known Robert Owen, who
adduced it as a proof of the effects of kindness and regular habits. Prison
discipline was at this time attracting attention, and Mrs. Fry’s labours were
very remarkable in this line. Very soon the female side at Newgate became
quite a show. Every one of any status in society, every distinguished

traveller, all people with high aims or deep feelings, were constrained to
visit the prison. Royalty for the first time took an interest in the gaol. The
Duke of Gloucester was among the visitors, and was escorted round by
Mrs. Fry in person. Another day she was engaged with the Chancellor of the
Exchequer; on a third with the Home Secretary and the Speaker of the
House of Commons. Still higher and more public honour was done to this
noble woman by the Marquis of Lansdowne in the House of Lords, who in
1818, in moving an address on the state of the English prisons, spoke in
terms of the highest eulogy of what had been effected “by Mrs. Fry and
other benevolent persons in Newgate.” After this, admission to view the
interior of Newgate was eagerly sought by numbers of persons whose
applications could not well be refused, in spite of the inconvenience
occasioned by thus turning a place of durance into a sentimental lounge. A
more desirable and useful result of these ministrations was the eagerness
they bred in others to imitate this noble example. Numbers of persons wrote
to Mrs. Fry from all parts of the country, seeking advice and encouragement
as to the formation of similar societies. Even magistrates appealed to her
regarding the management of their prisons. In consequence of the numerous
communications received by the Newgate Association, a “corresponding
committee” was formed to give information and send replies. Letters came
from various capitals of Europe, including St. Petersburgh, Turin, and
Amsterdam, which announced the formation of Ladies’ Societies for prison
visiting.
During many years following its inauguration, the “Ladies’ Association”
continued their benevolent exertions with marked and well-deserved
success. They did not confine their labours to Newgate, but were equally
active in the other metropolitan prisons. They also made the female
transports their peculiar charge, and obtained many reforms and
ameliorations in the arrangement of the convict ships, and the provision for
the women on landing at the Antipodes. That the first brilliant successes
should be long and continuously maintained could hardly be expected. As
time passed and improvements were introduced, there was not the same
room for active intervention, and it was difficult to keep alive the early fire.
The energy of the Ladies’ Committee might not exactly flag, but it came
later on to be occasionally misapplied. And it will be found in a later
chapter, that the inspectors of prisons were not altogether satisfied with the
ground taken up by the association.

CHAPTER IV.

THE BEGINNINGS OF PRISON REFORM.
Prison reform generally taken up—Mr. Neild’s visitation—Howard’s great work repeated—Neglect
of prisons not the fault of the legislature—Numerous gaol Acts passed, but not carried out by local
authorities—Prison Discipline Society formed in 1817—Its distinguished members—Mr. Buxton a
leading spirit—His views and arguments for insisting on prison reform—Idea of classification first
given in gaol Act of 1784, but never carried out—The society animadverts upon condition of
various prisons—The Borough compter—Guildford—Irons—Their weight—Overcrowding—
Underground dungeons—“The pit”—A few brilliant exceptions—Bury St. Edmunds—Ilchester—
Newgate compared badly with last-named, but diet improved, and irons removed from untried—
Complete reform still indispensable for real improvement—Prisoners committed to Newgate taken
through the streets in gangs, chained—Opponents of reform—Sydney Smith laughs at efforts of
Prison Discipline Society—It continues to work undeterred—Gives attention to tread-wheels—
Also to plans for prison construction—Faulty prison architecture—Society rewarded by new
legislation, and devotes itself to seeing that new Acts are observed—Borough prisons the worst—
Acts did not apply to them—Great diversity of practice and discipline prevail—Various hours of
labour—Borough gaols continue bad because municipalities beyond reach of the law—Description
of worst borough gaols—Newgate continues a bye-word—Its shortcomings—Further legislation—
Report of Lords’ Committee in 1835—Reform of Municipal Corporations brings about reform in
borough prisons.

WHILE Mrs. Fry was diligently engaged upon her self-imposed task in
Newgate, other earnest people, inspired doubtless by her noble example,
were stirred up to activity in the same great work. It began to be understood
that prison reform could only be compassed by continuous and combined
effort. The pleadings, however eloquent, of a single individual were unable
to more than partially remedy the widespread and colossal evils of British
prisons. Howard’s energy and devotion were rewarded by lively sympathy,
but the desire to improve which followed his exposures was but short-lived.
It was so powerless against the persistent neglect of those intrusted with
prison management, that, five-and-twenty years later, Mr. Neild, a second
Howard, as indefatigable and self-sacrificing, found by personal visitation
that the condition of gaols throughout the kingdom was, with a few bright
exceptions, still deplorable and disgraceful. Mr. Neild was compelled to
admit in 1812 that “the great reformation produced by Howard was in
several places merely temporary: some prisons that had been ameliorated
under the persuasive influence of his kind advice were relapsing into their
former horrid state of privation, filthiness, severity, or neglect; many new

dungeons had aggravated the evils against which his sagacity could not but
remonstrate; the motives for a transient amendment were becoming
paralyzed, and the effect had ceased with the cause.”
I have shown in a previous chapter what Newgate was at this period,
despite a vast expenditure and boasted efforts to introduce reforms. Some of
the county gaols, and one or two borough gaols, had been rebuilt, generally
through the personal activity of influential and benevolent local magnates,
but the true principles of prison construction were as yet but imperfectly
understood, and such portions of the “improved” gaols of that period as
were still extant a few years back, contrast ludicrously with the prison
architecture based upon a century’s experience of our own age.
The neglect of prison reform in those days was not to be visited upon the
legislature. The executive, although harassed by internal commotion and
foreign war, was not entirely callous to the crying need for amelioration in
gaols. Measures remedial, although at best partial and incomplete, were
introduced from time to time. Thus in 1813 the exaction of gaol fees had
been forbidden by law, and two other acts more peremptory and precise
followed on the same subject in succeeding years. In 1814 a bill was
brought in to insist upon the appointment of chaplains in gaols, and when
this had passed into law, it was subsequently amplified, and the rates of
salaries fixed. Various acts were also passed to consolidate and amend
previous gaol acts. The erection of new prison buildings was made
imperative under certain conditions and following certain rules; the
principle of classification was freshly enunciated; prison regulations were
framed for general observance. But the effect of this legislation was rather
weakened by the remoteness of the pressure exercised. The onus of
improvement lay upon the magistracy, the local authorities administering
local funds, and they were not threatened with any particular penalties if
they evaded or ignored the new acts. Moreover, the laws applied more
particularly to county jurisdictions. The borough gaols, those in fact under
corporate management, were not included in the new measures; it was
hoped that their rulers would hire accommodation in the county prisons,
and that the inferior establishments would in course of time disappear. Yet
the borough gaols were destined to survive many years, and to exhibit for a
long time to come all the worst features of gaol mismanagement.
It was in 1817 that a small band of philanthropists resolved to form
themselves into an association for the improvement of prison discipline.

They were hopeless of any general reform by the action of the executive
alone. They felt that private enterprise might with advantage step in, and by
the collection and diffusion of information, and the reiteration of sound
advice, greatly assist the good work. The association was organized under
the most promising auspices. A king’s son, the Duke of Gloucester, was the
patron; among the vice-presidents were many great peers of the realm,
several bishops, and a number of members of the House of Commons,
including Mr. Manners Sutton, Mr. Sturges Bourne, Sir James Mackintosh,
Sir James Scarlett, and William Wilberforce. An active committee was
appointed, comprising many names already well known, some of them
destined to become famous in the annals of philanthropy. One of the
moving spirits was the Honourable H. G. Bennet, M.P., whose vigorous
protests against the lamentable condition of Newgate have already been
recorded. Mrs. Fry’s brother, Mr. Samuel Hoare, Junior, was chairman of
the committee, on which also served many noted members of the Society of
Friends—Mr. Gurney, Mr. Fry, Messrs. Forster, and Mr. T. F. Buxton, the
coadjutor of Wilberforce in the great anti-slavery struggle. Mr. Buxton had
already been associated with Mrs. Fry in the Newgate visitation, and his
attention had thus been drawn to the neglected state of English prisons.
When in Belgium he had examined with great satisfaction the admirable
management of the great “Maison de Force” at Ghent,[60] which Howard
had eulogized some forty years before. Mr. Buxton communicated what he
had seen at Ghent to the Prison Discipline Society, and was induced to
make the account public. In order to give greater value to the pamphlet, he
personally visited several English gaols, and pointed his observations by
drawing forcible contrasts between the good and bad.
Mr. Buxton’s small work on prison discipline[61] gave a new aspect to
the question he had so much at heart. For the first time the doctrine was
enunciated that prisoners had rights of their own. The untried, and in the
eyes of the law still innocent, could claim pure air, wholesome and
sufficient food, and opportunities for exercise. They had a right, Mr. Buxton
affirmed, to be employed in their own crafts, provided it could be safely
followed in prison. “You have no right,” he says, addressing the authorities,
“to subject a prisoner to suffering from cold, by want of bed-clothing by
night or firing by day; and the reason is plain: you have taken him from his
home, and have deprived him of the means of providing himself with the
necessaries or comforts of life, and therefore you are bound to furnish him

with moderate indeed but suitable accommodation.” “You have for the same
reason,” he goes on, “no right to ruin his habits by compelling him to be
idle, his morals by compelling him to mix with a promiscuous assemblage
of hardened and convicted criminals, or his health by forcing him at night
into a damp, unventilated cell, with such crowds of companions as very
speedily render the air foul and putrid; or to make him sleep in close contact
with the victims of contagious and loathsome disease, or amidst the noxious
effluvia of dirt and corruption. In short, attention to his feelings, mental and
bodily, a supply of every necessary, abstraction from evil society, the
conservation of his health and industrious habits, are the clear, evident,
undeniable rights of an unconvicted prisoner.” Nor even when found guilty
and his liberty forfeited did his privileges cease. The law appointed a
suitable punishment for the offence; it was for those charged with the
administration of the law to guard carefully against any aggravation of that
punishment, to see that “no circumstances of severity are found in his
treatment which are not found in his sentence.” No judge ever condemned a
man to be half-perished with cold by day, or half-suffocated with heat by
night. “Who ever heard of a criminal being sentenced to catch the
rheumatism or the typhus fever?” “Disease, cold, famine, nakedness, and
contagious and polluted air are not lawful punishments in the hands of the
civil magistrates; nor has he a right to poison or starve his fellow-
creatures.”[62] “The convicted delinquent has his rights,” said Mr. Buxton
authoritatively. “All measures and practices in prison which may injure him
in any way are illegal, because they are not specified in his sentence; he is
therefore entitled to a wholesome atmosphere, decent clothing and bedding,
and a diet sufficient to support him.”
These somewhat novel but undoubtedly indisputable propositions were
backed up, not by sound arguments only, but by the letter of the law. As Mr.
Buxton pointed out, many old acts of parliament designed to protect the
prisoner were still in full force. Some might be in abeyance, but they had
never been repealed, and some were quite freshly imported upon the Statute
Book. As far back as the reign of Charles II., a law was passed[63] declaring
that sufficient provision should be made for the relief and setting on work
of “poor and needy prisoners committed to the common jail for felony and
other misdemeanours, who many times perish before their trial; and the
poor there living idle and unemployed become debauched, and come forth
instructed in the practice of thievery and lewdness.” As a remedy, justices

of the peace were empowered to provide materials for the setting of poor
prisoners to work, and to pay overseers or instructors out of the county
rates. Again, the 22 Charles II. c 20 ordered the gaoler to keep felons and
debtors “separate and apart from one another, in distinct rooms, on pain of
forfeiting his office and treble damages to the party aggrieved.” A much
later act, the 14 Geo. III. c. 59 (1774), which was contemporaneous with
Howard’s first journeys, laid down precise rules as regards cleanliness, and
the proper supply of space and air. This act set forth that “whereas the
malignant fever commonly called the jail distemper is found to be owing to
want of cleanliness and fresh air in the several jails, the fatal consequences
whereof might be prevented if the justices of the peace were duly
authorized to provide such accommodations in jails as may be necessary to
answer this salutary purpose, it is enacted that the justices shall order the
walls of every room to be scraped and white-washed once every year.”
Ventilators, hand and others, were to be supplied. An infirmary, consisting
of two distinct rooms, one for males and one for females, should be
provided for the separate accommodation of the sick. Warm and cold baths,
or “commodious bathing tubs,” were to be kept in every gaol, and the
prisoners directed to wash in them before release. These provisions were
almost a dead letter. Yet another act passed in 1791, if properly observed,
should have insured proper attention to them. By the 31 Geo. III. c. 46, s. 5,
two or more justices were appointed visitors of prisons, and directed to visit
and inspect three times every quarter. They were to report in writing to
quarter sessions as to the state of the gaol, and as to all abuses which they
might observe therein.
The most important gaol act of that early period, however, was the 24
Geo. III. c. 54, s. 4 (1784), which was the first legislative attempt to compel
the classification of prisoners, or their separation into classes according to
their categories or crimes. It was made incumbent upon the justices to
provide distinct places of confinement for five classes of prisoners, viz.—
1. Prisoners convicted of felony.
2. Prisoners committed on a charge or suspicion of felony.
3. Prisoners guilty of misdemeanours.
4. Prisoners charged with misdemeanours.
5. Debtors.

It was further ordered that male prisoners should be kept perfectly
distinct from the females. King’s evidences were also to be lodged apart.
Infirmaries separating the sexes were also to be provided, a chapel too, and
warm and cold baths. “Care also was to be taken that the prisoners shall not
be kept in any apartment underground.”
In an early report of the Prison Discipline Improvement Society,
published some six-and-thirty years after the promulgation of this act, the
flagrant and persistent violations of it and others, which had continued
through that long period, are forcibly pointed out. In 1818, out of five
hundred and eighteen prisons in the United Kingdom, to which a total of
upwards of one hundred thousand prisoners had been committed in the year,
only twenty-three prisons were divided according to law; fifty-nine had no
division whatever to separate males and females; one hundred and thirty-six
had only one division for the purpose; sixty-eight had only two divisions,
and so on. In four hundred and forty-five prisons no work of any
description had been introduced for the employment of prisoners; in the
balance some work was done, but with the most meagre results. The want
of room was still a crying evil. In one hundred gaols, capable of
accommodating only eight thousand five hundred and forty-five persons, as
many as thirteen thousand and fifty-seven were crowded. Many of the gaols
were in the most deplorable condition: incommodious, as has been stated,
insecure, unhealthy, and unprovided with the printed or written regulations
required by law. To specify more particularly one or two of the worst, it
may be mentioned that in the Borough Compter the old evils of
indiscriminate association still continued unchecked. All prisoners passed
their time in absolute idleness, or killed it by gambling and loose
conversation. The debtors were crowded almost inconceivably. In a space
twenty feet long by six wide, twenty men slept on eight straw beds, with
sixteen rugs amongst them, and a piece of timber for a bolster. Mr. Buxton,
who found this, declared that it seemed physically impossible, but he was
assured that it was true, and that it was accomplished by “sleeping
edgeways.” One poor wretch, who had slept next the wall, said he had been
literally unable to move for the pressure. “In the morning the stench and
heat were so oppressive that he and every one else on waking rushed
unclothed into the yard;” and the turnkey told Mr. Buxton that the “smell on
first opening the door was enough to knock down a horse.” The hospital
was filled with infectious cases, and in one room, seven feet by nine, with

closed windows, where a lad lay ill with fever, three other prisoners, at first
perfectly healthy, were lodged. Of course they were seized with the fever;
so that the culprit, in addition to his sentence, had to endure by “the
regulations of the city a disease very dangerous in its nature,” and ran the
risk of a lingering and painful death.[64]
At Guildford prison, which Mr. Buxton also visited in 1818, there was
no infirmary, no chapel, no work, no classification. The irons, which nearly
every one wore, were remarkably heavy; those double ironed could not take
off their small clothes.[65] No prison dress was allowed, and half the
inmates were without shirts or shoes or stockings. The diet was limited to
dry bread, which was of the best certainly, and a pound and a half in weight.
Matters were on much the same footing at St. Albans. They were far worse
at Bristol, although at Mr. Buxton’s visit a new gaol was in process of
erection, the first step towards reform since Howard’s visitation in 1774. In
1818 the old gaol was so densely packed that it was nearly impossible to
pass through the yards for the throng. One hundred and fifty were lodged in
a prison just capable of holding fifty-two. In the crowd, all of them persons
who had “no other avocation or mode of livelihood but thieving,” Mr.
Buxton counted eleven children—children hardly old enough to be released
from the nursery. All charged with felony were in heavy irons, without
distinction of age. All were in ill health; almost all were in rags; almost all
were filthy in the extreme. The state of the prison, the desperation of the
prisoners, broadly hinted in their conversation and plainly expressed in their
conduct, the uproar of oaths, complaints, and obscenity, “the indescribable
stench,” presented together a concentration of the utmost misery and the
utmost guilt. It was “a scene of infernal passions and distresses,” says
Buxton, “which few have imagination sufficient to picture, and of which
fewer still would believe that the original is to be found in this enlightened
and happy country.”
There was still worse to come. Having explored the yards and adjacent
day rooms, and sleeping cells, a door was unlocked, the visitors were
furnished with candles, and they descended eighteen long steps into a vault.
At the bottom was a circular space, through which ran a narrow passage,
and the sides of which were fitted with barrack bedsteads. The floor was on
the level of the river, and very damp. The smell at one o’clock of the day
“was something more than can be expressed by the term disgusting.” On the
dirty bedstead lay a wretched being in the throes of severe illness. The only

ventilation of this pit, this “dark, cheerless, damp, unwholesome cavern—a
dungeon in its worst sense”—was by a kind of chimney, which the
prisoners kept hermetically sealed, and which had never been opened in the
memory of the turnkey. Untried persons were often lodged in this nauseous
underground den, and sometimes slept in “the pit,” loaded with heavy irons
for a whole year, waiting the gaol delivery. Confinement for twelve months
in the Bristol gaol was counted a punishment equivalent to seven years’
transportation.
In this prison there was no female infirmary. Sick women and their
children remained in the ordinary wards, and propagated disease. No prison
dress was allowed; no reception-room was provided, no soap, towels, or
baths. The bedclothes consisted only of a single “very slight” rug. The
allowance of food daily to felons was a fourpenny loaf, a price which in
those days fluctuated enormously—as much as a hundred per cent. in a
couple of years; but as no similar variation occurred in the prisoner’s
appetite, his ration was somewhat precarious. As for the debtors, they had
no allowance whatever, and were often in imminent danger of starvation.
With all this, the inmates were crowded together at night to such a degree as
to excite surprise that they should escape suffocation. There reigned
through the whole edifice a chilly, damp, unwholesome atmosphere, and the
effluvia from the prisoners was so nauseous that the chaplain found it
necessary to take his place before they entered chapel, as he could not
otherwise have faced the smell.
It is consoling to know that there were a few brilliant exceptions to this
cruel, callous neglect. Already, as early as 1818, a prison existed at Bury St.
Edmunds which was a model for imitation to others at that time, and which
even fulfilled many of the exacting requirements of modern days. The great
principles of classification, cleanliness, and employment were closely
observed. There were eighty-four separate sleeping-cells, and unless the
gaol was overcrowded, every inmate passed the night alone, and in
comparative comfort, with a bed and proper bedding. The prison stood on a
dry, airy situation outside the town. Prisoners on reception were treated as
they are now-a-days—bathed, dressed in prison clothes, and inspected by
the surgeon. No irons were worn except as a punishment. Personal
cleanliness was insisted upon, and all parts of the prison were kept
scrupulously clean. There was an infirmary, properly found and duly looked
after. No idleness was permitted among the inmates. Trades were taught, or

prisoners were allowed to follow their own if suitable. There was, besides, a
mill for grinding corn, somewhat similar to a turn-spit, which prisoners
turned by walking in rows. This made exertion compulsory, and imposed
hard labour as a proper punishment. Another gaol, that of Ilchester, was also
worthy of all commendation. It exhibited all the good points of that at Bury.
At Ilchester the rule of employment had been carried further. A system not
adopted generally till nearly half a century later had already prevailed at
Ilchester. The new gaol had been in a great measure constructed by the
prisoners themselves. Masons, bricklayers, carpenters, painters had been
employed upon the buildings, and the work was pronounced excellent by
competent judges. Industrial labour had also been introduced with
satisfactory results. Blanket weaving and cloth spinning was carried on
prosperously, and all the material for prisoners’ apparel was manufactured
in the gaol. There were work-rooms for wool-washing, dyeing, carding, and
spinning. The looms were constantly busy. Tailors were always at work, and
every article of clothing and bedding was made up within the walls. There
was a prison laundry too, where all the prisoners’ linen was regularly
washed. The moral welfare of the inmates was as closely looked after as the
physical. There was an attentive chaplain, a schoolmaster, and regular
religious and other instruction.
Compared with those highly meritorious institutions Newgate still
showed but badly. Its evils were inherent and irremediable, but some
ameliorating measures had been introduced, mainly through the exertions of
a new governor, Mr. Brown, who succeeded Mr. Newman at Newgate in
1817.[66] The most noticeable of the improvements introduced was a better
regulation of dietaries within the prison. The old haphazard system, by
which meat was issued in bulk, a week’s allowance at a time, was
abolished, and there was a regular scale of daily rations adopted. The diet
was now ample. It consisted of a pound and a half of bread per diem; for
breakfast a pint of gruel; for dinner half a pound of boiled meat, or a quart
of soup with vegetables, on alternate days. The food was properly prepared
in the prison kitchen. Meat was no longer issued raw, to be imperfectly
cooked before a ward fire and bolted gluttonously, the whole two pounds at
one sitting. Mr. Brown confidently asserted that no gaol in England now fed
its inmates so well as did Newgate. So plentiful was this dietary, that
although the old permission remained in force of allowing the friends of
prisoners to bring them supplies from outside, the practice was falling into

abeyance, and the prisoners seldom required private assistance to eke out
their meals.[67] It was also claimed for the more ample and more orderly
distribution of victuals, that the general health of the prisoners had greatly
improved. Mr. Brown also, much to his own credit, brought about the
abandonment of the practice of ironing all prisoners as a matter of course.
In 1818 prisoners awaiting trial in Newgate, were at length relieved from
this illegal infliction. Convicts were not even compelled to wear irons,
providing they behaved well. It was found that shackles might be safely
dispensed with, even in the case of the most desperate characters. This was
effected by stopping the nearly indiscriminate admission of visitors, which
had hitherto prevailed all over the gaol. Ironing it will be remembered,[68]
was a distinguishing badge, so that when the gaol was cleared the free
might be readily known from the captive, and escapes prevented. Under the
new rule visitors were not allowed to pass into the interior of the prison, but
were detained between the grating. This change led to some discontent,
until it was found that the much greater boon of relief from irons
accompanied it, and the reform was quietly accepted. Indeed the best
consequences followed from the removal of irons. The prisoners were much
better disposed; there were no riots, and fewer disturbances.
But nothing short of radical reform and complete reconstruction could
touch the deep-seated evils of association, overcrowding, and idleness. The
first still produced deplorable results—results to be observable for many
years to come. Mr. Buxton mentions the case of a boy whose apparent
innocence and artlessness had attracted his attention. He had been
committed for an offence for which he was acquitted. He left Newgate
utterly corrupted, and after lapsing into crime, soon returned with a very
different character. Other cases of moral deterioration have already been
recorded. Some attempt was made to reduce the overcrowding, on the
recommendation of the House of Commons Committee of 1818, but this
applied only a partial remedy. The bulk of the prisoners were still left in
idleness. A few fortunate criminals, many of them kept back from
transportation on purpose, who were skilled in trades, were employed at
them. Painters, plasterers, and carpenters were allowed to follow their
handicrafts, with the reward of sixpence per diem and a double allowance
of food. They used their own tools, and this without any dangerous
consequences as regards facilitating the escape of others, thus disposing of
the objection so long raised against the industrial employment of prisoners

in Newgate. But this boon of toil was denied to all but a very limited
number. As the Prison Discipline Society pertinently observed in a report
dated 1820, “It is obvious that reformation must be materially impeded, and
in some cases utterly defeated, when the prisoners are defectively classed,
remain without constant inspection or employment, and are consequently
condemned to habits of idleness and dissipation.”
Newgate prisoners were the victims to another most objectionable
practice which obtained all over London. Persons committed to a
metropolitan gaol at that time were taken in gangs, men and women
handcuffed together, or linked on to a long chain, unless they could afford
to pay for a vehicle out of their own funds. Even then they were not certain
of the favour, for I find a reference to a decent and respectable woman sent
to Newgate, who handed a shilling to the escort warder to provide her with
a hackney coach; but this functionary pocketed the cash, and obliged the
woman to walk, chained to the rest. As the miserable crew filed through the
public streets, exposed to the scornful gaze of every passenger, they were
followed by a crowd of reckless boys, who jeered at and insulted them.
Many thus led in procession were in a shocking condition of dirt and
misery, frequently nearly naked, and often bearing upon them the germs,
more or less developed, of contagious disease. “Caravans,” the forerunners
of the prison vans, were first made use of about 1827. That the need for
prison reform was imperative may be gathered from the few out of many
instances I have adduced, yet there were those who, wedded to ancient
ideas, were intolerant of change; they would not admit the existence of any
evils. One smug alderman, a member of the House of Commons, sneered at
the ultra philanthropy of the champions of prison improvement. Speaking
on a debate on prison matters, he declared that “our prisoners have all that
prisoners ought to have, without gentlemen think they ought to be indulged
with Turkey carpets.” The Society for the Improvement of Prison Discipline
was taxed with a desire to introduce a system tending to divest punishment
of its just and salutary terrors; an imputation which the Society indignantly
and very justly repudiated, the statement being, as they said, “refuted by
abundant evidence, and having no foundation whatever in truth.”
Among those whom the Society found arrayed against it was Sydney
Smith, who, in a caustic article contributed to the ‘Edinburgh Review,’
protested against the pampering of criminals. While fully admitting the
good intentions of the Society, he condemned their ultra humanitarianism as

misplaced. He took exception to various of the proposals of the Society. He
thought they leant too much to a system of indulgence and education in
gaols. He objected to the instruction of prisoners in reading and writing. “A
poor man who is lucky enough,” he said, “to have his son committed for a
felony educates him under such a system for nothing, while the virtuous
simpleton who is on the other side of the wall is paying by the quarter for
these attainments.” He was altogether against too liberal a diet; he
disapproved of industrial occupations in gaols, as not calculated to render
prisons terrible. “There should be no tea and sugar, no assemblage of
female felons around the washing-tub, nothing but beating hemp and
pulling oakum and pounding bricks—no work but what was tedious,
unusual.”... “In prisons, which are really meant to keep the multitude in
order, and to be a terror to evil-doers, there must be no sharings of profits,
no visiting of friends, no education but religious education, no freedom of
diet, no weavers’ looms or carpenters’ benches. There must be a great deal
of solitude, coarse food, a dress of shame, hard, incessant, irksome, eternal
labour, a planned and regulated and unrelenting exclusion of happiness and
comfort.”[69]
Undeterred by these sarcasms and misrepresentations, the Society
pursued its laudable undertaking with remarkable energy and great
singleness of purpose. The objects it had in view were set forth in one of its
earliest meetings. It sought to obtain and diffuse useful information, to
suggest beneficial regulations, and circulate tracts demonstrating the
advantages of classification, constant inspection, regular employment, and
humane treatment generally, with religious and moral instruction. It
earnestly advocated the appointment of female officers to take exclusive
charge of female prisoners, a much-needed and, according to our ideas,
indispensable reform, already initiated by the Ladies’ Committee at
Newgate.[70] It made the subject of the newly-invented tread-wheels, or
stepping-wheels, as they were at first called, its peculiar affair, and obtained
full details, from places where they had been adopted, of the nature of these
new machines,[71] the method by which they were worked, and the dietaries
of the prisoners employed upon them. Nor did it confine itself to mere
verbal recommendations. The good it tried to do took active shape in the
establishment of temporary refuges—at Hoxton for males, and in the
Hackney Road for females—for the reception of deserving cases discharged
from prison. The governor of Newgate and other metropolitan prisons had

orders of admission to this refuge, which he could bestow on prisoners on
release, and so save the better-disposed or the completely destitute from
lapsing at once into crime. The refuge, which had for its object the training
of its inmates in habits of industry, and in moral and religious duty, and
which after a time sought to provide them with suitable situations, was
supported entirely out of the funds of the Society. At the time of its greatest
prosperity, its annual income from donations and subscriptions was about
£1600.
Another point to which the Society devoted infinite pains was the
preparation of plans for the guidance of architects in the construction of
prisons. A very valuable volume published by the Society traced the
progress of prison architecture from the days when the gaol was the mere
annexe of the baronial or episcopal castle, or a dungeon above or below the
gate of a town, to the first attempts at systematic reconstruction carried out
under the advice and supervision of Howard.[72] It is interesting to observe
that the plan of “radiation,” by which the prison blocks radiated from a
central hall, like spokes in a wheel, was introduced as early as 1790 by Mr.
Blackburn, an architect of eminence who was very largely employed in the
erection of prison buildings at the close of the last century. With some
important modifications this principle of radiation is still the rule. The
Society did not limit its remarks to the description of what had already been
done, but it offered suggestions for future buildings, with numerous
carefully-executed drawings and designs of the model it recommended for
imitation. Experience has since shown that in some respects these plans are
defective, especially in the placing of the governor’s residence in the centre
of the prison. It was thought that this would guarantee constant supervision
and inspection, but it did nothing of the kind, and only the presence of
warders on duty is found now-a-days to be really efficacious. The main
recommendations, however, are based upon common sense, and none are
more commendable than that which deprecates the excessive ornamentation
of the external parts of the edifice. “The new gaols,” as Howard says,
“having pompous fronts, appear like palaces to the lower class of people,
and many persons are against them on this account.” The Prison Society
reproves the misdirected efforts of ambitious architects, who by a lavish and
improvident expenditure of public money sought to “rank the prisons they
built among the most splendid buildings of the city or town.” Absence of
embellishment is in perfect unison with the character of the establishment.

These are principles fully recognized now-a-days, and it may fairly be
conceded that the Prison Discipline Society’s ideal differed little from that
kept in view in the construction of the latest and best modern gaols.
After a few years of active exertion the Society was rewarded by fresh
legislation. To its efforts, and their effect upon Parliament and the public
mind, we must attribute the new Gaol Acts of 4 Geo. IV. cap. 64, and 5 Geo.
IV. cap. 85, which having gone through several sessions, at last became law
in 1823-4. By the preamble of the first-named act it was declared
“expedient to introduce such measures and arrangements as shall not only
provide for the safe custody, but shall also tend more effectually to preserve
the health and improve the morals of the prisoners, and shall insure the
proper measure of punishment to convicted offenders.” Accordingly due
provision was made for the enforcement of hard labour on all prisoners
sentenced to it, and for the employment of all others. As a rider to this
enactment, it was laid down that any prisoner who could work and would
not had no claim to be supported in gaol, “unless such ability (to work)
should cease by reason of sickness, infirmity, the want of sufficient work, or
from any other cause.” It was distinctly laid down that male and female
prisoners should be confined in separate buildings or parts of the prison, “so
as to prevent them from seeing, conversing, or holding any intercourse with
each other.” Classification was insisted upon, in the manner laid down by
the 24 Geo. III. cap. 54,[73] with such further separation as the justices
should deem conducive to good order and discipline. Female prisoners were
in all cases to be under the charge of female officers. Every prison
containing female prisoners was to have a matron who was to reside
constantly in the prison. The religious and moral welfare of the prisoners
were to be attended to, the first by daily services, the latter by the
appointment of schoolmasters and instruction in reading and writing. Last,
but not least, the use of irons was strictly forbidden, “except in cases of
urgent and absolute necessity,” and every prisoner was to be provided with
a hammock or cot to himself, suitable bedding, and, if possible, a separate
cell. The second act, passed in the following year, enlarged and amended
the first, and at the same time gave powers to the House to call for
information as to the observance of its provisions.
The promulgation of these two Gaol Acts strengthened the hands of the
Prison Discipline Society enormously. It had now a legal and authoritative
standard of efficiency to apply, and could expose all the local authorities

that still lagged behind, or neglected to comply with the provisions of the
new laws. The Society did not shrink from its self-imposed duty, but
continued year after year, with unflagging energy and unflinching spirit, to
watch closely and report at length upon the condition of the prisons of the
country. For this purpose it kept up an extensive correspondence with all
parts of the kingdom, and circulated queries to be answered in detail,
whence it deduced the practice and condition of every prison that replied.
Upon these and the private visitations made by various members the
Society obtained the facts, often highly damnatory, which were embodied in
its annual reports. The progress of improvement was certainly extremely
slow. It was long before the many jurisdictions imitated the few. Gaols, of
which the old prison at Reading was a specimen, were still left intact. In
that prison, with its cells and yards arranged within the shell of an ancient
abbey chapel, the prisoners, without firing, bedding, or sufficient food,
spent their days “in surveying their grotesque prison, or contriving some
means of escape by climbing the fluted columns which supported the
Gothic arches of the aisles, and so passing by the roof down into the garden
and on to freedom.” In a county prison adjoining the metropolis, the
separation between the male and female quarters was supposed to be
accomplished by the erection of an iron railing; in this same prison capital
convicts were chained to the floor until execution. In another gaol not far
off male and female felons still occupied the same room—underground, and
reached by a ladder of ten steps. In others the separation between the sexes
consisted in a hanging curtain, or an imaginary boundary line, and nothing
prevented parties from passing to either side but an empty regulation which
all so disposed could defy. Numbers of the gaols were still unprovided with
chaplains, and the prisoners never heard Divine service. In many others
there were no infirmaries, no places set apart for the confinement of
prisoners afflicted with dangerous and infectious disorders. No attempt was
made to maintain discipline. Half the gaols had no code of rules properly
prepared and sanctioned by the judges, according to law.
By degrees, however, the changes necessary to bring the prisons into
conformity with the recent acts were attempted, if not actually introduced
into the county prisons, to which, with a few of the more important city or
borough prisons, these acts more especially applied.[74] Most of the local
authorities embarked into considerable expenditure, determined to rebuild
their gaols de novo on the most approved pattern, or to reappropriate,

reconstruct, and patch up the existing prisons till they were more in
accordance with the growing requirements of the times. Religious worship
became more generally the rule; chaplains were appointed, and chapels
provided for them; surgeons and hospitals also. Workshops were built at
many prisons, various kinds of manufactures and trades were set on foot,
including weaving, matting, shoe-making, and tailoring. The interior of one
prison was illuminated throughout with gas,—still a novelty, which had
been generally adopted in London only four years previously,—“a measure
which must greatly tend to discourage attempts to escape.” There were
tread-wheels at most of the prisons, and regular employment thereon or at
some other kind of hard labour. In many places too where the prisoners
earned money by their work, they were granted a portion of it for their own
use after proper deduction for maintenance. Only a few glaring evils still
demanded a remedy. The provision of separate sleeping cells was still quite
inadequate. For instance, in twenty-two county gaols there were 1063
sleeping cells in all (in 1823), and the average daily number committed that
year amounted to 3985. The want of sleeping cells long continued a crying
need. Four years later the Prison Society reported that in four prisons,
which at one time of the year contained 1308 prisoners, there were only
sixty-eight sleeping rooms or cells, making an average of nineteen persons
occupying each room. At the New Prison, Clerkenwell, which had become
the principal reception gaol of Middlesex, and so took all the untried, the
sleeping space per head was only sixteen inches, and often as many as 293
men[75] had to be accommodated on barrack beds occupying barely 390 feet
lineal. The “scenes of tumult and obscenity” in these night rooms are said to
have been beyond description; a prisoner in one nocturnal riot lost an eye.
Yet to Clerkenwell were now committed the juveniles, and all who were
inexperienced in crime.
Great want of uniformity in treatment in the various prisons was still
noticeable, and was indeed destined to continue for another half century, in
other words, until the introduction of the Prison Act of 1877.[76] At the time
of which I am writing there was great diversity of practice as regards the
hours of labour. In some prisons the prisoners worked seven hours a day, in
others ten and ten and a half. The nature of the employment varied greatly
in severity, especially the tread-wheel labour. In some county gaols, as I
have already said, female prisoners were placed upon the tread-wheel; in
others women were very properly exempted from it, and also from all

severe labour. Earnings were very differently appropriated. Here the
prisoners were given the whole amount, there a half or a third. Sometimes
this money might be expended in the purchase of extra articles of food.[77]
The rations varied considerably everywhere. It was still limited to bread in
some places, the allowance of which varied from one to three pounds; in
others meat, soup, gruel, beer were given. Here and there food was not
issued in kind, but a money allowance which the prisoner might expend
himself. Bedding and clothing was still denied, but only in a few gaols; in
others both were supplied in ample quantities, the cost varying per prisoner
from twenty shillings to five pounds. It was plain that although the law had
defined general principles of prison government, too much discretion was
still left to the magistracy to fill in the details. The legislature only
recommended, it did not peremptorily insist. Too often the letter of the law
was observed, but not its spirit.
One great impediment to wide amelioration was that a vast number of
small gaols lay out of reach of the law. When the new acts were introduced,
numerous prisons under local jurisdiction were exempted from the
operation of the law. They were so radically bad that reform seemed
hopeless, and it was thought wiser not to bring them under provisions which
clearly could not be enforced. Mr. Peel, who as Home Secretary had charge
of the bill, which became the 4 Geo. IV. cap. 64, said that he had abstained
from legislating for these small jurisdictions “on mature deliberation.” “It is
not,” he said, “that I am insensible of the lamentable and disgraceful
situation in which many of them are, but I indulge a hope that many of them
will contract with the counties, that many of them will build new gaols, and
that when in a year or two we come to examine their situation, we shall find
but few which have not in one or other of these ways removed the
grievance of which such just complaint is made. When that time arrives I
shall not hesitate to ask Parliament for powers to compel them to make the
necessary alterations, for it is not to be endured that these local jurisdictions
should remain in the deplorable situation in which many of them now are.”
At this time there were in England one hundred and seventy boroughs,
cities, towns, and liberties which possessed the right of trying criminals for
various offences. Nearly every one of these jurisdictions had its own prison,
and there were one hundred and sixty such gaols in all. Many of them
consisted of one or two rooms at most. The total number of prisoners they
received during the year varied from two persons to many hundreds. It was

in these gaols, withdrawn from the pressure of authority, that the new rules
were invariably ignored. The right and privilege of the borough to maintain
its own place of confinement was so “ancient and indisputable,” that for
long no idea of interfering with them was entertained. All that was urged
was that the borough magistracy had no right to govern their gaols so as to
corrupt those committed, “to the injury of the peace and morals of the
public.” As time passed, however, these magistrates made no effort at
reform. They neither built new gaols nor contracted with the counties, as
had been expected, for the transfer of their prisoners. As the Society put it
in 1827, “the friends to the improvement of prison discipline will regret to
learn that the gaols attached to corporate jurisdictions continue to be the
fruitful sources of vice and misery, debasing all who are confined within
their walls, and disseminating through their respective communities the
knowledge and practice of every species of criminality.” The Society
proceeded to support this indictment by facts. It is much the old story. The
prisoners were lodged in rooms whence they could converse with
passengers in the streets, and freely obtain spirits and other prohibited
articles. All descriptions of offenders congregated together in the felons’
wards. The keeper and his officers resided at a distance from the gaol, and
left its inmates to their own devices. There was no decency whatever in the
internal arrangements; still no separation of the sexes, no means of ablution
or other necessary services. One borough prison consisted of nothing more
than a couple of cells, about ten yards square, and absolutely nothing more.
In another borough, with a population of ten thousand, the prison was of the
same dimensions. One cell was a dungeon, and the other an “improper and
unhealthy abode for any human being,” with a watercourse running through
it.
Most of these small gaols were still in existence and in much the same
state eight years later, as is shown by the report of the Commissioners to
inquire into the state of the municipal corporations in 1835. An examination
of this report shows how even the most insignificant township had its gaol.
Thus Dinas Mwddy, in Merionethshire, had, “besides the pinfold and the
stocks or crib, a little prison.” Clun, in Shropshire, had a lock-up under the
town hall. At Eye, in Suffolk, the gaol was part of the poor-house; so it was
at Richmond, in Yorkshire, where the master of the workhouse was also
keeper of the gaol. At Godmanchester there was no gaol, but a cage to
secure prisoners till they could be taken before a magistrate. Kidderminster

had a prison, one damp chill room, “the only aperture through which air
could be admitted being an iron grating level with the street, through the
bars of which quills or reeds were inserted, and drink conveyed to the
prisoners.” At Walsall, in Staffordshire, the gaol consisted of six cells,
frequently so damp that the moisture trickled down the walls; there was not
space for air or exercise, and the prison allowance was still limited to bread
and water.
Newgate through all these years continued a bye-word with the Society.
Some reforms had certainly been introduced, such as the abolition of irons,
already referred to, and the establishment of male and female infirmaries.
The regular daily visitation of the chaplain was also insisted upon. But it
was pointed out in 1823 that defective construction must always bar the
way to any radical improvement in Newgate. Without enlargement no
material change in discipline or interior economy could possibly be
introduced. The chapel still continued incommodious and insufficient;
female prisoners were still exposed to the full view of the males, the netting
in front of the gallery being perfectly useless as a screen. In 1824 Newgate
had no glass in its windows, except in the infirmary and one ward of the
chapel yard; and the panes were filled in with oiled paper, an insufficient
protection against the weather; and as the window-frames would not shut
tight, the prisoners complained much of the cold, especially at night. There
was a diminution in the numbers in custody, due to the adoption of the
practice of not committing at once to Newgate every offender for trial at the
Old Bailey, but nothing had been done to improve the prison buildings. In
1827 the Society was compelled to report that “no material change had
taken place in Newgate since the passing of the prison laws,[78] and that
consequently the observance of their most important provisions was
habitually neglected.” It was enacted that the court of aldermen should
make rules for the government of the prison, and that these should be
posted publicly within the walls. As yet no rules or regulations had been
printed or prepared. By another clause of the Gaol Act, two justices were to
be appointed to visit the prison at least thrice in every quarter, and “oftener
if occasion required.” These justices were to inspect every part of the
prison, and examine into the state and condition of prisoners. The city
justices had not fulfilled this obligation. Idleness was still the general rule
for all prisoners in Newgate, in defiance of the law. There was no
instruction of adult prisoners, in accordance with the law. The sleeping

accommodation was still altogether contrary to the latest ideas. The visits of
friends was once more unreservedly allowed, and these incomers freely
brought in extra provisions and beer. Last, and worst of all, the
arrangements for keeping the condemned prisoners between sentence and
execution were more than unsatisfactory. They were not confined apart
from each other, but were crowded thirty or forty together in the press yard,
so that “corrupt conversation obliterated from the mind of him who is
doomed to suffer every serious feeling and valuable impression.”[79] I shall
have more to say on this subject, and upon the state of Newgate generally,
in the following chapter.
The Prison Society did not relax its efforts as time passed, but its leading
members had other and more pressing claims upon their energies. Mr.
Buxton had succeeded to the great work which William Wilberforce had
commenced, and led the repeated attacks upon slavery in British colonies
till the whole body of the slaves were manumitted in 1833. In the year
immediately preceding this, Parliament was too busy with the great
question of its own reform to spare much time for domestic legislation.
Nevertheless a committee of the House of Commons was appointed in 1831
to report upon the whole system of secondary punishments, which dealt
with gaols of all classes, as well as transportation. This committee
animadverted strongly upon the system in force at the metropolitan gaols,
and more especially upon the condition of Newgate, where “prisoners
before and after trial are under no efficient superintendence,” and where
“there was no restraint, or attempt at restraint.” Mr. Samuel Hoare was
examined by this committee, and stated that in his opinion Newgate, as the
common gaol of Middlesex, was wholly inadequate to the proper
confinement of its prisoners. From the moment of a person’s committal he
was certain to be plunged deeper and deeper in guilt. The prisoners were
crowded together in the gaol, contrary to the requirements of the 4 Geo. IV.
Again in 1835 prisons and their inmates became once more the care of the
senate, and the subject was taken up this time by the House of Lords. A
committee was appointed, under the presidency of the Duke of Richmond,
“to inquire into and report upon the several gaols and houses of correction
in the counties, cities, and corporate towns within England and Wales; upon
the rules and discipline therein established with regard to the treatment of
unconvicted as well as convicted persons.” The committee was also to
report upon the manner in which sentences were carried out, and to

recommend any alterations necessary in the rules in order to insure
uniformity of discipline. It met on the 31st March, 1835, and continued its
sittings well into July, during which time a host of witnesses were
examined, and the committee presented three separate reports, embodying
recommendations which may be said to have formed the basis of modern
prison management.
It was laid down as a first and indispensable principle that uniformity of
discipline should prevail everywhere, a theory which did not become a
practical fact for forty more years. As a means of securing this uniformity, it
was suggested that the rules framed for prison government should be
subjected to the Secretary of State for approval, and not, as heretofore, to
the judges of assize; that, both to check abuses and watch the progress of
improvement, inspectors of prisons should be appointed, who should visit
all the prisons from time to time and report to the Secretary of State. It was
recommended that the dietaries should be submitted and approved like the
rules; that convicted prisoners should not receive any food but the gaol
allowance; that food and fuel should be issued in kind, and never provided
by the prisoners themselves out of monies granted them. The use of
tobacco, hitherto pretty generally indulged in both by men and women,
should be strictly prohibited, “as a stimulating luxury inconsistent with any
notion of strict discipline and the due pressure of just punishment.” Prison
officers should not have any share in prisoners’ earnings, which should be
paid into general prison funds, and no part of them handed over to the
prisoners themselves. As a means of increasing the severity of
imprisonment, letters and visits from outside should not be permitted during
the first six months of an imprisonment. Various other recommendations
were made as regards the appointment of chaplain and schoolmasters; the
limitation of the powers of wardsmen, or prisoners employed in positions of
trust, who should not be permitted to traffic with their fellow-prisoners in
any way. The committee most of all insisted upon the entire individual
separation of prisoners, except during the hours of labour, religious
worship, and instruction, as “absolutely necessary for preventing
contamination, and for securing a proper system of prison discipline.” This
was the first enunciation of the system of separate confinement, which was
eventually to replace the attempted arrangement of prisoners by classes
according to antecedents and crimes, an incomplete and fallacious method
of preventing contamination. The Lords’ Committee fully recognized the

painful fact that the greatest mischief followed from the intercourse which
was still permitted in so many prisons; to use its words, “the comparatively
innocent are seduced, the unwary are entrapped, and the tendency to crime
in offenders not entirely hardened is confirmed by the language, the
suggestions, and the example of more depraved and systematic criminals.”
This committee, as well as the one preceding it, also reported in terms of
strong reprobation on the small prisons and gaols still under the borough
corporations. The Commons’ Committee gave it as their opinion that they
were in a deplorable state. The same language was used by the
commissioners appointed to inquire into the municipal corporations in
1835, when speaking more particularly of the borough gaols. In these the
commissioners found “additional proof of the evils of continuing the
present constitution of the local tribunals. Instances rarely occur in which
the borough gaols admit of any proper classification of the prisoners. In
some large towns, as at Berwick on Tweed, Southampton, and Southwark,
they (the prisons) are in a very discreditable condition. In many of the
smaller boroughs they are totally unfit for the confinement of human
beings. In these places the prisoners are often without a proper supply of air
and light; frequently the gaols are mere dungeons under the town hall.... It
was frequently stated in evidence that the gaol of the borough was in so
unfit a state for the reception of prisoners, that plaintiffs were unwilling to
consign the defendants against whom they had obtained execution to
confinement within its walls.” The Lords’ Committee on Gaols were of the
same opinion, and considered the prisons under corporate or peculiar
jurisdiction in a very unsatisfactory condition. They therefore recommended
that the prisoners should be removed to the county gaols from such prisons
as were past improvement, and that the borough funds should be charged
for the accommodation. The whole question was again dealt with in Lord
John Russell’s bill for the reform of the municipal corporations, and with a
more liberal election of town councillors, and the establishment of
municipal institutions upon a proper footing, the borough gaols were
brought more into accordance with the growing demand for a more humane
system of prison management.

CHAPTER V.

THE FIRST REPORT OF THE INSPECTORS OF PRISONS.
Appointment of inspectors of prisons—Their names and antecedents—Mr. Crawford and Mr.
Whitworth Russell at once visit Newgate, and make a searching inquiry—Find old evils still
present—Overcrowding no longer excusable—Want of classification—The governor, Mr. Cope,
blamed for this—Prisoners’ treatment—No beds, uncleanly, and in rags—Baleful despotism of
prisoner wardsmen, who have more power than the officers—Again proofs of Mr. Cope’s neglect
—Scenes of horror in Newgate—Gambling, drinking, debauchery—Flash books allowed—Libel of
Stockdale v. Hansard grows out of this—Serious affrays in the wards—Prisoners badly wounded
by one another—Extra and luxurious food admitted—Also visitors of both sexes indiscriminately
—Same evils to a lesser degree on female side—Ladies’ Association—No real separation of the
sexes—Mr. Cope an offender in this respect—The press-yard or condemned convicts’ yard the
worst of all—Culpable and indiscriminate association—Brutal behaviour of many of those
sentenced to death—The ordinary checked in his zeal—Criminal lunatics allowed to remain in
Newgate—House of Commons’ prisoners monopolize hospital and best accommodation in the gaol
—Abuses of State Side revived in their case—Evils rampant briefly recapitulated by inspectors—
Their report raises a storm in the city—Protest of the Corporation—Some attempt at reform—
Many of the charges reiterated in later reports—No radical reform possible without complete
reconstruction.

IN the preceding chapter I have been tempted by the importance of the
general question to give it prominence and precedence over the particular
branch of which I am treating. Newgate has remained rather in the
background while the whole of the gaols as a body were under discussion.
But this digression was necessary in order to present a more complete
picture of the state of gaols in the early part of the present century, just
before the public mind was first awakened to the need for thorough reform.
I shall now return to the great gaol of the city of London, and give a more
detailed account of its condition and inner life as the inspectors of prisons
found them in 1835-6. These gentlemen were appointed in October 1835,
owing to the strong representations of the Lords’ Committee,[80] backed up
by the evidence of several influential witnesses. Mr. Samuel Hoare, when
examined, considered it indispensably necessary, to carry out whatever
system might be established, that inspectors should watch over the
observance of the law. He saw no objection on the score of their probable
interference with the local jurisdiction, but he would not arm them with any
authority lest their co-operation might be offensive. Sir Frederick Roe was
of the same opinion as regards the appointment, but he would give the

inspectors the power of acting as well as reporting. They should be persons,
he thought, selected from the highest class; the duty was most important,
one which required discretion, judgment, and knowledge of law, with
sufficient insight and experience to discover defects in prison discipline.
These considerations no doubt had weight with those who made the
selection of the first inspectors, and the two gentlemen appointed were
probably the most fitted in England to be so employed. One was Mr.
William Crawford, the other the Rev. Whitworth Russell.
The first named had long been an active philanthropist, devoting himself
more particularly to the reformation of juvenile criminals.[81] William
Crawford had been one of the promoters and managers of the Philanthropic
Society’s farm school. Later on he had devoted himself to the personal
investigation of the prisons of the United States. At that time the mild and
intelligent prison discipline in force in Pennsylvania, the legacy of the old
Quaker immigrants, had made such prisons as Auburn a model for
imitation. Several European states had despatched emissaries to examine
and report upon them. France had sent MM. Beaumont and De Tocqueville,
who subsequently published several interesting works on the subject.
England was represented by Mr. Crawford, and the result of his inquiry was
given to the public as an appendix to the House of Commons’ ‘Report on
Secondary Punishments.’ It is an able and exhaustive state paper, testifying
to the keenness of the writer’s perception, and his unremitting labour in
pursuing his researches. Mr. Crawford was thoroughly versed in the still
imperfectly understood science of prison management, and fully qualified
for his new duties.
The second inspector, the Rev. Whitworth Russell, was the chaplain of
Millbank penitentiary, the great architectural experiment which grew out of
the strong representations of Jeremy Bentham and others, and was the first
national recognition of the principle that punishment must be reformatory
as well as deterrent.
Messrs. Crawford and Russell proceeded to carry out their new functions
with commendable energy, and without a moment’s loss of time. The ink
was barely dry upon their letters of appointment before they appeared at
Newgate, and commenced a searching investigation. They attended early
and late; they mustered the prisoners, examined into their condition, took
voluminous evidence from all classes of individuals, from the governor
down to the convict in the condemned cells. They visited the wards after

locking-up time, and saw with their own eyes what went on. Having started
with the proposition that the metropolitan prisons must monopolize their
attention, as constituting, to use their own words, “a subject of magnitude
and importance sufficient to exclude other gaols,” they soon narrowed their
inquiry still further, and limited it to Newgate alone. Newgate indeed
became the sole theme of their first report. The fact was that the years as
they passed, nearly twenty in all, had worked but little permanent
improvement in this detestable prison. Changes introduced under pressure
had been only skin deep. Relapse was rapid and inevitable, so that the latter
state of the prison was worse than the first. The disgraceful overcrowding
had been partially ended, but the same evils of indiscriminate association
were still present; there was the old neglect of decency, the same callous
indifference to the moral well-being of the prisoners, the same want of
employment and of all disciplinary control.
All these evils were set forth at length in the inspectors’ first report.
There was no longer the faintest possible excuse for overcrowding. The
numbers now committed to Newgate had sensibly diminished. The prison
had become more or less a place of detention only, harbouring mainly those
awaiting trial. To these were still added an average of about fifty expecting
the last penalty of the law; a certain number of transports awaiting removal
to the colonies; an occasional prisoner or two committed by the Houses of
Parliament, the Courts of King’s Bench, Common Pleas, and Exchequer, the
Commissioners of bankruptcy and of taxes; smugglers, and a larger number
sentenced for very short terms, and for offences of the most varying
description, by the Central Criminal Court. The sum total thus produced
was inconsiderable compared with the hundreds that had formerly filled the
gaol, and the whole by proper management might have been so
accommodated as to prevent overcrowding. But incredible as it may appear,
the authorities of Newgate declined to avail themselves of the advantages
offered them, and when the population fell they shut up one half the gaol
and crowded up the other. Some rooms remained quite empty and
unoccupied, while others were full to overflowing. Not only were the wards
thus needlessly crammed, and for no reason but the niggardliness of the
corporation which refused a proper supply of bedding, but the occupants of
each were huddled together indiscriminately. The inspectors found in the
same wards in the chapel yard the convicted and the untried, the felon and
the misdemeanant, the sane and the insane, the old and young offender. The

classification prescribed by the Gaol Act, which laid down that certain
prisoners should not intermix, was openly neglected, and “the greatest
contempt shown for the law.” In another part there were men charged with
and convicted of unnatural offences shut up with lads of tender years; minor
offenders charged with small thefts or non-payment of small sums were
cheek by jowl with convicts sentenced to long terms of transportation. In
the master’s side yard, which had only one washing place, as many as
seventy-eight prisoners, frequently more, were associated together, “of
every variety of age, habit, and delinquency, without employment,
oversight, or control.” In the middle yard it was still worse. “Here,” say the
inspectors, “are herded together the very worst class of prisoners; certainly
a more wretched combination of human beings can hardly be imagined. We
have reason to fear that poverty, ragged clothes, and an inability to pay the
ward dues, elsewhere exacted for better accommodation, consign many of
the more petty and unpractised offenders to this place, where they
inevitably meet with further contamination from the society of the most
abandoned and incorrigible inmates of the gaol.”
No doubt the governor for the time being, Mr. Cope, was in a great
measure to blame for all this, and for the want of proper classification. I
shall have occasion to speak again, and more at length, of Mr. Cope’s
careless and perfunctory discharge of his many manifest duties, but I shall
here confine myself to animadverting on his neglect as regards the
appropriation of his prison. He was unable to give any reason whatever for
not utilizing the whole of the wards. He saw certain rooms fill up, and yet
took no steps to open others that were locked up and empty. He blamed the
construction of Newgate for the neglect of classification, and was yet
compelled to confess that he had made no attempt whatever to carry it out.
The fact was, he did not keep the classification of prisoners on first arrival
in his own hands, nor even in that of his officers. A new prisoner’s fate, as
to location, rested really with a powerful fellow-prisoner. The inspectors
found that prisoners had their places assigned to them by the inner
gatesman, himself a convicted prisoner, and a “wardsman” or responsible
head of a room. The wardsman still exacted dues, of which more directly,
and this particular official took excellent care to select as residents for his
own ward those most suitable from his own point of view. “So great is the
authority exercised by him, and so numerous were his opportunities of
showing favouritism, that all the prisoners may be said to be in his power. If

a man is poor and ragged, however inexperienced in crime, or however
trifling may be the offence for which he has been committed, his place is
assigned among the most depraved, the most experienced, and the most
incorrigible offenders in the middle yard.” It must be admitted that so far
but little effort had been made to counteract the evils of indiscriminate
association.
It was not likely that a system which left innocent men—for the great
bulk of new arrivals were still untried—to be pitchforked by chance
anywhere, into any sort of company, within this the greatest nursery of
crime in London, should exercise even the commonest care for the personal
decency or comfort of the prisoners. Their treatment was also a matter of
chance. They still slept on rope mats on the floor, herded together in
companies of four or more to keep one another warm, and under the scanty
covering of a couple of dirty stable-rugs apiece. So closely did they lie
together, that the inspectors at their night visits found it difficult in stepping
across the room to avoid treading on them. Sometimes two mats were
allotted to three sleepers. Sometimes four slept under the same bedding, and
left their mats unoccupied. The rugs used were never washed; an order
existed that the bedding should be taken into the yards to be aired, but it
was not very punctually obeyed. The only convenience for personal
ablutions were the pumps in the yards, and the far-off baths in the
condemned or press-yard. Water might not be taken into the ward for
washing purposes. There was some provision of clothing, but it was quite
insufficient, and nothing at all was given if prisoners had enough of their
own to cover their nakedness. The inspectors paraded the prisoners, and
found them generally ragged and ill-clad, squalid and filthy in the extreme;
many without stockings, and with hardly shoes to their feet; some, who had
the semblance of covering on the upper part of their feet, had no soles to the
shoes, and their bare feet were on the ground. This, too, was in the depth of
the winter, and during a most inclement season. The allowance of food was
not illiberal, but its issue was precarious, and dependent on the good will of
the wardsmen, who measured out the portions to each according to his eye,
and not with weights and measures, no turnkey being present. Too much
was left to the wardsman. It was he who could issue small luxuries; he sold
tea, coffee, sugar, tobacco, although prohibited, and extra beer. He charged
a weekly sum as ward dues for the use of knives, forks, and plates—a
perpetuation under another form of the old detestable custom of garnish. He

had power where his exactions were resisted of making the ward most
uncomfortable for the defaulter. He could trump up a false complaint
against his fellow-prisoner, and so get him punished; he might keep him
from the fire, or give him his soup or gruel in a pail instead of a basin.
The authority of these wardsmen so improperly exalted, and so entirely
unchecked, degenerated into a baneful despotism. They bought their offices
from one another, and were thus considered to have a vested interest in
them. Their original capital had been a few shillings, and for this they
purchased the right to tax their fellows to the extent of pounds per week.
The wardsman had a monopoly in supplying provisions, gave dinner and
breakfast at his own price, and was such complete master of the ward that
none of its inmates were suffered to make tea or coffee for themselves lest it
should interfere with his sales. He made collections when it suited him for
ward purposes, to be spent as he chose, in candles and so forth. When the
wardsman was a man of some education, with some knowledge of legal
chicanery gained by personal experience, he might add considerably to his
emoluments by drawing briefs and petitions for his fellows. There was a
recognized charge of 5s. per brief, for a petition of from 1s. 6d. to 8s.,
according to its length, and by these payments a wardsman had been known
to amass as much as £40. The man intrusted with this privilege was often
the inner gatesman, the prisoner official already mentioned, who held the
fate of new arrivals as regards location in his hands. It was not strange that
he should sometimes misuse his power, and when prisoners were not to be
cajoled into securing his legal services, had been known to employ threats,
declaring that he was often consulted by the governor as to a prisoner’s
character, in view of speaking to it at the trial, and he could easily do them a
good turn—or a very bad one. The brief-drawing gatesman and wardsman
at the time of the inspectors’ first visit must have been a particularly
powerful personage. He was on the most intimate and improperly familiar
terms with the turnkeys, had a key of both the master’s side and middle side
yards, was the only person present at the distribution of beer, and was
trusted to examine, and, if he chose, pass in, all provisions, money, clothes,
and letters brought for prisoners by their friends.
All the wardsmen alike were more or less irresponsible. The turnkeys
complained bitterly that these old prisoners had more power than they
themselves. The governor himself admitted that a prisoner of weak intellect
who had been severely beaten and much injured by a wardsman did not

dare complain, the victim of this cruel ill-usage having “more fear of the
power of the wardsman to injure him, than confidence in the governor’s
power to protect him.” These wardsmen, besides thus ruling the roast, had
numerous special privileges, if such they can be called. They were not
obliged to attend chapel, and seldom if ever went; “prisoners,” said one of
them under examination, “did not like the trouble of going to chapel.” They
had a standing bedstead to sleep on, and a good flock mattress; double
allowance of provisions, filched from the common stock. Nobody interfered
with them or regulated their conduct. They might get drunk when so
disposed, and did so frequently, alone or in company. Evidence was given
before the inspectors of eight or ten prisoners seen “giddy drunk, not able to
sit upon forms.” The female wards-women were also given to
intemperance. The matron deposed to having seen the gates-woman
“exceedingly drunk,” and having been insulted by her. There was no
penalty attached to drunkenness. A wardsman did not necessarily lose his
situation for it. Nor was drink the only creature comfort he might enjoy. He
could indulge in snuff if a snuff-taker, and might always smoke his pipe
undisturbed; for although the use of tobacco had been prohibited since the
report of the Lords Committee, it was still freely introduced into the prison.
Probably authority would not have been so recklessly usurped by the
wardsmen had not the proper officials too readily surrendered it. The
turnkeys left the prisoners very much to themselves, never entering the
wards after locking-up time, at dusk, till unlocking next morning, and then
only went round to count the number. Many of them were otherwise and
improperly occupied for hours every day in menial services for the
governor, cleaning his windows or grooming his horse. One turnkey had
been so employed several hours daily for nearly eleven years. It was not
strange that subordinates should neglect their duty when superiors set the
example. Nothing was more prominently brought out by the inspectors than
the inefficiency of the governor at that time, Mr. Cope. He may have erred
in some points through ignorance, but in others he was clearly guilty of
culpable neglect. We have seen that he took no pains to classify and
separate prisoners on reception. This was only one of many grave omissions
on his part. He did not feel it incumbent on himself to visit his prison often
or see his prisoners. The act prescribed that he should do both every twenty-
four hours, but days passed without his entering the wards. The prisoners
declared that they did not see him oftener than twice a week; one man who

had been in the condemned ward for two months, said the governor only
came there four times. Again, a turnkey deposed that his chief did not enter
the wards more than once a fortnight.
But it is only fair to Mr. Cope to state that he himself said he went
whenever he could find time, and that he was constantly engaged attending
sessions and going with drafts to the hulks. But when he did visit, his
inspections were of the most superficial character; sometimes he looked at
his bolts and bars, but he never examined the cupboards, coal-boxes, or
other possible hiding-places for cards, dice, dangerous implements, or other
prohibited articles. He only attended chapel once on Sunday, never on the
week-day, and generally devoted the time service was in progress to taking
the descriptions of newly-arrived prisoners. He really did not know what
passed in his gaol, and was surprised when the inspectors proved to him
that practices of which he was ignorant, and which he admitted that he
reprehended, went on without hindrance. He was satisfied to let matters run
on as in the old times, he said in his own justification; with him what was,
was right, and evils that should have been speedily rooted out remained
because they had the prescription of long usage. He kept no daily journal of
occurrences, and nothing, however important, was recorded at the time. The
aldermen never called upon him to report, and left him nearly unsupervised
and uncontrolled. In his administration of discipline he was quite uncertain;
the punishments he inflicted were unequal, and it was not the least part of
the blame imputed to him that he made special favourites of particular
prisoners, retaining of his own accord in Newgate, and for years, felons
who should have been sent beyond the seas. But, indeed, his whole rule was
far too mild, and under this mistaken leniency the interior of the gaol was
more like a bear-garden or the noisy purlieus of a public-house than a
prison.
It was the same old story—evil constantly in the ascendant, the least
criminal at the mercy of the most depraved. Under the reckless contempt for
regulations, the apathy of the authorities, and the undue ascendancy of those
who, as convicted felons, should have been most sternly repressed, the most
hardened and the oldest in vice had the best of it, while the inexperienced
beginner went to the wall. Edward Gibbon Wakefield,[82] who spent three
years in Newgate a little before the time of the inspectors’ first report, said
with justice that “incredible scenes of horror occur in Newgate.” It was,
moreover, in his opinion undoubtedly the greatest nursery of crime in

London. The days were passed in idleness, debauchery, riotous quarrelling,
immoral conversation, gambling, indirect contravention of parliamentary
rules, instruction in all nefarious processes, lively discourse upon past
criminal exploits, elaborate discussion of others to be perpetrated after
release. No provision whatever was made for the employment of prisoners,
no materials were purchased, no trade instructors appointed. There was no
school for adults; only the boys were taught anything, and their instructor,
with his assistant, were convicted prisoners. Idle hands and unoccupied
brains found in mischief the only means of whiling away the long hours of
incarceration. Gaming of all kinds, although forbidden by the Gaol Acts,
was habitually practised. This was admitted in evidence by the turnkeys,
and was proved by the appearance of the prison tables, which bore the
marks of gaming-boards deeply cut into them. Prisoners confessed that it
was a favourite occupation, the chief games being “shoving halfpence” on
the table, pitch in the hole, cribbage, dominoes, and common tossing, at
which as much as four or five shillings would change hands in an hour.
But this was not the only amusement. Most of the wards took in the daily
papers, the most popular being the ‘Times,’ ‘Morning Herald,’ and
‘Morning Chronicle’; on Sunday the ‘Weekly Dispatch,’ ‘Bell’s Life,’ and
the ‘Weekly Messenger.’ The newsman had free access to the prison; he
passed in unsearched and unexamined, and, unaccompanied by an officer,
went at once to his customers, who bought their paper and paid for it
themselves. The news-vendor was also a tobacconist, and he had thus ample
means of introducing to the prisoners the prohibited but always much-
coveted and generally procurable weed. In the same way the wardsman laid
in his stock to be retailed. Other light literature besides the daily journals
were in circulation: novels, flash songs, play-books, such as ‘Jane Shore,’
‘Grimm’s German Tales,’ with Cruikshank’s illustrations, and publications
which in these days would have been made the subject of a criminal
prosecution. One of these, published by Stockdale, the inspectors styled “a
book of the most disgusting nature.”[83] There was also a good supply of
Bibles and prayers, the donation of a philanthropic gentleman, Captain
Brown, but these, particularly the Bibles, bore little appearance of having
been used. Drink, in more or less unlimited quantities, was still to be had.
Spirits certainly were now excluded; but a potman, with full permission of
the sheriffs, brought in beer for sale from a neighbouring public-house, and
visited all the wards with no other escort than the prisoner gatesman. The

quantity to be issued per head was limited by the prison regulations to one
pint, but no steps were taken to prevent any prisoner from obtaining more if
he could pay for it. The beer-man brought in as much as he pleased; he sold
it without the controlling presence of an officer. Not only did prisoners
come again and again for a “pint,” but large quantities were carried off to
the wards to be drunk later in the day.
There were more varied, and at times, especially when beer had
circulated freely, more uproarious diversions. Wrestling, in which legs were
occasionally broken, was freely indulged in; also such low games as
“cobham,” leap-frog, puss in the corner, and “fly the garter,” for which
purpose the rugs were spread out to prevent feet slipping on the floor.
Feasting alternated with fighting. The weekly introduction of food, to which
I shall presently refer, formed the basis of luxurious banquets, washed down
by liquor and enlivened by flash songs and thrilling long-winded
descriptions of robberies and other “plants.” There was much swearing and
bad language, the very worst that could be used, from the first thing in the
morning to the last thing at night.[84] New arrivals, especially the innocent
and still guileless debutant, were tormented with rude horse-play, and
assailed by the most insulting “chaff.” If any man presumed to turn in too
early he was “toed,” that is to say, a string was fastened to his big toe while
he was asleep, and he was dragged from off his mat, or his bedclothes were
drawn away across the room. The ragged part of the prisoners were very
anxious to destroy the clothes of the better dressed, and often lighted small
pieces of cloth, which they dropped smouldering into their fellow-
prisoners’ pockets. Often the victim, goaded to madness, attacked his
tormentors; a fight was then certain to follow. These fights sometimes took
place in the daytime, when a ring was regularly formed, and two or three
stood by the door to watch for the officer’s approach. More often they
occurred at night, and were continued to the bitter end. The prisoners in this
way administered serious punishment on one another. Black eyes and
broken noses were always to be seen.
More cruel injuries were common enough, which did not result from
honest hand-to-hand fights. The surgeon’s journal produced to the
inspectors contained numerous entries of terrible wounds inflicted in a
cowardly way. “A serious accident: one of the prisoners had a hot poker run
into his eye.” “A lad named Matthew White has had a wound in his eye by a
bone thrown at him, which very nearly destroyed vision.” “There was a

disturbance in the transport yard yesterday evening, and the police were
called in. During the tumult a prisoner, ... who was one of the worst of the
rioters, was bruised about the head and body.” “Watkins’ knee-joint is very
severely injured.” “A prisoner Baxter is in the infirmary in consequence of a
severe injury to his wrist-joint.” Watkins’ case, referred to above, is made
the subject of another and a special report from the surgeon. He was in the
transport side, when one of his fellows, in endeavouring to strike another
prisoner with a large poker, missed his aim, and struck Watkins’ knee....
Violent inflammation and extensive suppuration ensued, and for a
considerable time amputation seemed inevitable. After severe suffering
prolonged for many months, the inflammation was subdued, but the
cartilage of the knee-joint was destroyed, and he was crippled for life. On
another occasion a young man, who was being violently teased, seized a
knife and stabbed his tormentor in the back. The prisoner who used the
knife was secured, but it was the wardsman, and not the officers, to whom
the report was made, and no official inquiry or punishment followed.
Matters were at times still worse, and the rioting went on to such
dangerous lengths as to endanger the safety of the building. On one
occasion a disturbance was raised which was not quelled until windows had
been broken and forms and tables burnt. The officers were obliged to go in
among the prisoners to restore order with drawn cutlasses, but the presence
and authority of the governor himself became indispensable. The worst
fights occurred on Sunday afternoons; but nearly every night the act of
locking up became, from the consequent removal of all supervision, the
signal for the commencement of obscene talk, revelry, and violence.
Other regulations laid down by the Gaol Acts were still defied. One of
these was that prisoners should be restricted to the gaol allowance of food;
but all could still obtain as much extra, and of a luxurious kind, as their
friends chose to bring them in. Visitors were still permitted to come with
supplies on given days of the week, about the only limitation being that the
food should be cooked, and cold; hot meat, poultry, and fish were also
forbidden. But the inspectors found in the ward cupboards mince-pies and
other pasties, cold joints, hams, and so forth. Many other articles were
introduced by visitors, including money, tobacco, pipes, and snuff. From the
same source came the two or three strong files which the inspectors found
in one ward, together with four bradawls, several large iron spikes, screws,
nails, and knives; “all of them instruments calculated to facilitate attempts

at breaking out of prison, and capable of becoming most dangerous
weapons in the hands of desperate and determined men.” The nearly
indiscriminate admission of visitors, although restricted to certain days,
continued to be an unmixed evil. The untried might see their friends three
times a week, the convicted only once. On these occasions precautions were
supposed to be taken to exclude bad characters, yet many persons of
notoriously loose life continually obtained egress. Women saw men if they
merely pretended to be wives; even boys were visited by their sweethearts.
Decency was, however, insured by a line of demarcation, and visitors were
kept upon each side of a separated double iron railing. But no search was
made to intercept prohibited articles at the gate, and there was no permanent
gate-keeper, which would have greatly helped to keep out bad characters.
Some idea of the difficulty and inconvenience of these lax regulations as
regards visiting, may be gathered from the statement that as many as three
hundred were often admitted on the same day—enough to altogether upset
what small show of decorum and discipline was still preserved in the
prison. Perhaps the worst feature of the visiting system was the permission
accorded to male prisoners “under the name of husbands, brothers, and
sons” to have access to the female side on Sundays and Wednesdays, in
order to visit their supposed relations there.
On this female side, where the Ladies’ Association still reigned supreme,
more system and a greater semblance of decorum was maintained. But there
were evils akin to those on the male side, prominent amongst which was the
undue influence accorded to prisoners. A female prisoner kept the registers.
Wards-women were allowed much the same authority, with the same
temptations to excess, and intoxication was not unknown among them and
others. The clothing was still meagre and ragged: the washing places
insufficient, and wanting in decency; in some yards the pump was the only
provision, and this in a place within sight of visitors, of the windows of the
male turnkeys, and unprotected from the weather. There was the same
crowding in the sleeping arrangements as on the male side; the same
scarcity of bedding. It was a special evil of this part of the prison, that the
devotional exercises, originally so profitable, had grown into a kind of
edifying spectacle, which numbers of well-meaning but inquisitive people
were anxious to witness. Thus, when the inspectors visited there were
twenty-three strangers, and only twenty-eight prisoners. The presence of so

many strangers, many of them gentlemen, distracted the prisoners’
attention, and could not be productive of much good.
The separation of the sexes was not indeed rigidly carried out in
Newgate as yet. We have seen that male prisoners visited their female
relations and friends on the female side. Besides this, the gatesman who
prepared the briefs had interviews with female prisoners alone while taking
their instructions; a female came alone and unaccompanied by a matron to
clean the governor’s office in the male prison; male prisoners carried coal
into the female prison, when they saw and could speak or pass letters to the
female prisoners; and the men could also at any time go for tea, coffee, and
sugar to Mrs. Brown’s shop, which was inside the female gate. In the bail-
dock, where most improper general association was permitted, the female
prisoners were often altogether in the charge of male turnkeys. The
governor was also personally responsible for gross contravention of this
rule of separation, and was in the habit of drawing frequently upon the
female prison for prisoners to act as domestic servants in his own private
dwelling. Some member of the Ladies’ Association observed and
commented upon the fact that a “young rosy-cheeked girl” had been kept by
the governor from transportation, while older women in infirm health were
sent across the seas. His excuse was that he had given the girl his promise
that she should not go, an assumption of prerogative which by no means
rested with him; but he afterwards admitted that the girl had been
recommended to him by the principal turnkey, who knew something of her
friends. This woman was really his servant, employed to help in cleaning,
and taken on whenever there was extra work to be done. The governor had
a great dislike, he said, to seeing strangers in his house. This girl had been
first engaged on account of the extra work entailed by certain prisoners
committed by the House of Commons, who had been lodged in the
governor’s own house. The house at this time was full of men and visitors;
waiters came in from the taverns with meals. Some of the prisoners had
their valets, and all these were constantly in and out of the kitchen where
this female prisoner was employed. There was revelling and roystering, as
usual, with “high life below-stairs.” The governor sent down wine on
festive occasions, of which no doubt the prisoner housemaid had her share.
It can hardly be denied that the governor, in his treatment of this woman,
was acting in flagrant contravention of all rules.

Eighteen years had elapsed since the formation of the “Ladies’
Association,” and Mrs. Fry with her colleagues still laboured assiduously in
Newgate, devoting themselves mainly to the female prison, although their
ministrations were occasionally extended to the male side. The inspectors
paid tribute to the excellence of the motives of these philanthropic ladies,
and recognized the good they did. They had introduced “much order and
cleanliness,” had provided work for those who had hitherto passed their
time in total idleness, and had made the treatment of female transports on
the way to New South Wales their especial care. They had tried, moreover,
by their presence and their pious, disinterested efforts, to restrain the
dissolute manners and vicious language of the unhappy and depraved
inmates. But it was already plain that they constituted an independent
authority within the gaols; they were frequently in conflict with the
chaplain, who not strangely resented the orders issued by the aldermen, that
women should be frequently kept from chapel in order that they might
attend the ladies’ lectures and exhortations. The admission of a crowd of
visitors to assist in these lay services has already been remarked upon; as
the inspectors pointed out, it had the bad effect of distracting attention, it
tended to “dissipate reflection, diminish the gloom of the prison, and
mitigate the punishment which the law has sentenced the prisoner to
undergo.”
It is to be feared too that although the surface was thus whitewashed and
decorous, much that was vicious still festered and rankled beneath, and that
when the restraining influences of the ladies were absent, the female
prisoners relapsed into immoral and uncleanly discourse. Even in the
daytime, when supervision was withdrawn, “the language used to be
dreadful,” says one of the women when under examination; “swearing and
talking of what crimes they had committed, and how they had done it.”
Another witness declared she had heard the most shocking language in the
yard; she said “she had never witnessed such scenes before, and hopes she
never shall again—it was dreadful!” After locking-up time, which varied, as
on the male side, according to the daylight, the scenes were often riotous
and disgraceful. The poor, who could afford no luxuries, went to bed early,
but were kept awake by the revelries of the rich, who supped royally on the
supplies provided from outside, and kept it up till ten or eleven o’clock.
There were frequent quarrels and fights; shoes and other missiles were

freely bandied about; and with all this “the most dreadful oaths, the worst
language, too bad to be repeated,” were made use of every night.
Bad as were the various parts of the gaol already dealt with, there still
remained one where the general callous indifference and mismanagement
culminated in cruel culpable neglect. The condition of the capitally-
convicted prisoners after sentence was still very disgraceful. The side they
occupied, still known as the press-yard, consisted of two dozen rooms and
fifteen cells. In these various chambers, until just before the inspectors
made their report, all classes of the condemned, those certain to suffer, and
the larger number who were nearly certain of a reprieve, were jumbled up
together, higgledy-piggledy, the old and the young, the murderer and the
child who had broken into a dwelling.[85] All privacy was impossible under
the circumstances. At times the numbers congregated together were very
great; as many as fifty and sixty, even more, were crowded indiscriminately
into the press-yard. The better-disposed complained bitterly of what they
had to endure; one man declared that the language of the condemned rooms
was disgusting, that he was dying a death every day in being compelled to
associate with such characters. In the midst of the noisy and blasphemous
talk no one could pursue his meditations; any who tried to pray became the
sport and ridicule of his brutal fellows.
Owing to the repeated entreaties of the criminals who could hardly hope
to escape the gallows, some show of classification was carried out, and
when the inspectors visited Newgate they found the three certain to die in a
day-room by themselves; in a second room were fourteen more who had
every hope of a reprieve. The whole of these seventeen had, however, a
common airing-yard, and took their exercise there at the same time, so that
men in the most awful situation, daily expecting to be hanged, were
associated continually with a number of those who could look with
certainty on a mitigation of punishment. The latter, light-hearted and
reckless, conducted themselves in the most unseemly fashion, and “with as
much indifference as the inmates of the other parts of the prison.” They
amused themselves after their own fashion; played all day long at blind-
man’s-buff and leap-frog, or beat each other with a knotted handkerchief,
laughing and uproarious, utterly unmindful of the companionship of men
upon whom lay the shadow of an impending shameful death. “Men whose
cases were dangerous, and those most seriously inclined, complained of
these annoyances,” so subversive of meditation, so disturbing to the

thoughts; they suffered sickening anxiety, and wished to be locked up alone.
This indiscriminate association lasted for months, during the whole of
which time the unhappy convicts who had but little hope of commutation
were exposed to the mockery of their reckless associates.
The brutal callousness of the bulk of the inmates of the press-yard may
be gathered from the prison punishment-book, which frequently recorded
such entries as the following: “Benjamin Vines and Daniel Ward put in
irons for two days for breaking the windows of the day room in the
condemned cells.” “Joseph Coleman put in irons for three days for striking
one of the prisoners,” in the same place. There were disputes and quarrels
constantly among these doomed men; it was a word and blow, an argument
clenched always with a fight. The more peaceably disposed found some
occupation in making Newgate tokens, leaden hearts,[86] and “grinding the
impressions off penny-pieces, then pricking figures or words on them to
give to their friends as memorials.” Turnkeys occasionally visited the press-
yard, but its occupants were under little or no control. The chaplain, who
might have been expected to make these men his peculiar care, and who at
one time had visited them frequently, often several times a week, had
relaxed his efforts, because, according to his own account, he was so
frequently stopped in the performance of his duties. In his evidence before
the inspectors he declared that “for years he gave his whole time to his
duties, from an early hour in the morning till late in the afternoon. He left
off because he was so much interfered with and laughed at, and from seeing
that no success attended his efforts, owing to the evils arising from
association.” Latterly his ministrations to the condemned had been
restricted to a visit on Sunday afternoons, and occasionally about once a
fortnight on a week-day.
It is only fair to Mr. Cotton to add that, according to his own journal, he
was unremitting in his attentions to convicts who were actually cast for
death, and the day of whose execution was fixed. He had no doubt a
difficult mission to discharge; on the one hand, the Ladies’ Association,
supported and encouraged by public approval, trenched upon his peculiar
province; on the other, the governor of the gaol sneered at his zeal,
stigmatized his often most just strictures on abuses as “a bundle of
nonsense,” and the aldermen, when he appealed to them for protection and
countenance, generally sided with his opponents. Nevertheless the
inspectors summed up against him. While admitting that he had had many

difficulties to contend with, and that he had again and again protested
against the obstacles thrown in his way, the inspectors “cannot forbear
expressing their opinion that he might have shown greater perseverance, in
the face of impediments confessedly discouraging,” as regards the private
teaching of prisoners; and they went on to say that “a resolved adherence, in
spite of discouragements the most disheartening, to that line of conduct
which his duty imposed on him, would, it is probable, have eventually
overcome the reluctance of some of the prisoners at least, and would have
possessed so much moral dignity as effectually to rebuke and abash the
profane spirit of the more insolent and daring of the criminals.”
The lax discipline maintained in Newgate was still further deteriorated
by the presence of two other classes of prisoners who ought never to have
been inmates of such a gaol. One of these were the criminal lunatics, who
were at this time and for long previous continuously imprisoned there. As
the law stood since the passing of the 9th Geo. IV. c. 40, any two justices
might remove a prisoner found to be insane, either on commitment or
arraignment, to an asylum, and the Secretary of State had the same power as
regards any who became insane while undergoing sentence. These powers
were not invariably put in force, and there were in consequence many
unhappy lunatics in Newgate and other gaols, whose proper place was the
asylum. At the time the Lords’ Committee sat there were eight thus retained
in Newgate, and a return in the appendix of the Lords’ report gives a total of
thirty-nine lunatics confined in various gaols, many of them guilty of
murder and other serious crimes. The inspectors in the following year, on
examining the facts, found that some of these poor creatures had been in
confinement for long periods: at Newgate and York Castle as long as five
years; “at Ilchester and Morpeth for seven years; at Warwick for eight years,
at Buckingham and Hereford for eleven years, at Appleby for thirteen years,
at Anglesea for fifteen years, at Exeter for sixteen years, and at Pembroke
for not less a period than twenty-four years.”
It was manifestly wrong that such persons, “visited by the most awful of
calamities,” should be detained in a common prison. Not only did their
presence tend greatly to interfere with the discipline of the prison, but their
condition was deplorable in the extreme. The lunatic became the sport of
the idle and the depraved. His cure was out of the question; he was placed
in a situation “beyond all others calculated to confirm his malady and
prolong his sufferings.” The matter was still further complicated at Newgate

by the presence within the walls of sham lunatics. Some of those included
in the category had actually been returned as sane from the asylum to which
they had been sent, and there was always some uncertainty as to who was
mad and who not. Prisoners indeed were known to boast that they had
saved their necks by feigning insanity. It was high time that the
unsatisfactory state of the law as regards the treatment of criminal lunatics
should be remedied, and not the least of the good services rendered by the
new inspectors was their inquiry into the status of these unfortunate people,
and their recommendation to improve it.
The other inmates of the prison of an exceptional character, and
exempted from the regular discipline, such as it was, were the ten persons
committed to Newgate by the House of Commons in 1835. These were the
gentlemen concerned in the bribery case at Ipswich in 1835, when a petition
was presented against the return of Messrs. Adam Dundas and Fitzroy
Kelly. Various witnesses, including Messrs. J. B. Dasent, Pilgrim, Bond,
and Clamp, had refused to give evidence before the House of Commons’
Committee; a Speaker’s warrant was issued for their arrest when they
absconded. Mr. J. E. Sparrow and Mr. Clipperton, the parliamentary agents
of the members whose election was impugned, were implicated in aiding
and abetting the others to abscond, and a Mr. O’Mally, counsel for the two
M.P.’s, was also concerned. Pilgrim and Dasent were caught and given into
the custody of the sergeant-at-arms, and the rest were either arrested or they
surrendered. A resolution at once passed the House without division to
commit the whole to Newgate, where they remained for various terms.
Dasent and Pilgrim were released in ten days, on making due submission.
O’Mally sent in a medical certificate, declaring that the imprisonment was
endangering his life, and after some question he was also released. The rest
were detained for more than a month, it being considered that they were the
most guilty, as being either professional agents, who advised the others to
abscond, or witnesses who did not voluntarily come forward when the
chance was given them.
Many of the old customs once prevalent in the State Side, so properly
condemned and abolished, were revived for the convenience of these
gentlemen, whose incarceration was thus rendered as little like
imprisonment as possible. A certain number, who could afford the high rate
of a guinea per diem, fixed by the under sheriff, were lodged in the
governor’s house, slept there, and had their meals provided for them from

the Sessions House or London Coffee-House. A few others, who could not
afford a payment of more than half a guinea, were permitted to monopolize
a part of the prison infirmary, where the upper ward was exclusively
appropriated to their use. They also had their meals sent in, and, with the
food, wine almost ad libitum. A prisoner, one of the wardsmen, waited on
those in the infirmary; the occupants of the governor’s house had their own
servants, or the governor’s. As a rule, visitors, many of them persons of
good position, came and went all day long, and as late as nine at night;
some to the infirmary, many more to the governor’s house. There were no
restraints, cards and backgammon were played, and the time passed in
feasting and revelry. Even Mr. Cope admitted that the committal of this
class of prisoners to Newgate was most inconvenient, and the inspectors
expressed themselves still more strongly in reprehension of the practice.
The infirmary at this particular period epitomized the condition of the gaol
at large. It was diverted from its proper uses, and, as the “place of the
greatest comfort,” was allotted to persons who should not have been sent to
Newgate at all. All the evils of indiscriminate association were strongly
accentuated by the crowd collected within its narrow limits. “It may easily
be imagined,” say the inspectors, in speaking of the prison generally, “what
must be the state of discipline in a place filled with characters so various as
were assembled there, where the tried and the untried, the sick and the
healthy, the sane and the insane, the young and the old, the trivial offender
and the man about to suffer the extreme penalty of the law, are all huddled
together without discrimination, oversight, or control.”
Enough has probably been extracted from this most damnatory report to
give a complete picture of the disgraceful state in which Newgate still
remained in 1835. The inspectors, however, honestly admitted that although
the site of the prison was convenient, its construction was as bad as bad
could be. Valuable space was cumbered with many long and winding
passages, numerous staircases, and unnecessarily thick and cumbrous inner
walls. The wards were in some cases spacious, but they were entirely
unsuited for separation or the inspection of prisoners. The yards were
narrow and confined, mainly because the ground plan was radically vicious.
These were evils inseparable from the place. But there were others
remediable under a better system of management. More attention to
ventilation, which was altogether neglected and inadequate, would have
secured a better atmosphere for the unhappy inmates, who constantly

breathed an air heavy, and, when the wards were first opened in the
morning, particularly offensive.
Again, the discipline commonly deemed inseparable from every place of
durance was entirely wanting. The primary object of committing a prisoner
to gaol, as the inspectors pointed out, was to deter not only the criminal
himself, but others from crime, and “to dispose him, by meditation and
seclusion, to return to an honest life.” But at Newgate the convicted
prisoner, instead of privation and hard fare, “is permitted to purchase
whatever his own means or the means of his friends in or out of prison can
afford, and he can almost invariably procure the luxuries of his class of life,
beer and tobacco, in abundance. Instead of seclusion and meditation, his
time is passed in the midst of a body of criminals of every class and degree,
in riot, debauchery, and gaming, vaunting his own adventures, or listening
to those of others; communicating his own skill and aptitude in crime, or
acquiring the lessons of greater adepts. He has access to newspapers, and of
course prefers that description which are expressly prepared for his own
class, and which abound in vulgar adventure in criminal enterprise, and in
the histories of the police, the gaol, and the scaffold. He is allowed
intercourse with prostitutes who, in nine cases out of ten, have originally
conduced to his ruin; and his connection with them is confirmed by that
devotion and generosity towards their paramours in adversity for which
these otherwise degraded women are remarkable. Having thus passed his
time, he returns a greater adept in crime, with a wider acquaintance among
criminals, and, what perhaps is even more injurious to him, is generally
known to all the worst men in the country; not only without the inclination,
but almost without the ability of returning to an honest life.”
These pungent and well-grounded strictures applied with still greater
force to the unconvicted prisoner, the man who came to the prison innocent,
and still uncontaminated, to be subjected to the same baneful influences,
and to suffer the same moral deterioration, whether ultimately convicted or
set free. The whole system, or more correctly the want of system, was
baneful and pernicious to the last degree. The evils of such association were
aggravated by the unbroken idleness; one “evil inflamed the other;”
reformation or any kind of moral improvement was impossible; the
prisoner’s career was inevitably downward, till he struck the lowest depths.
“Forced and constant intercourse with the most depraved individuals of his
own class; the employment of those means and agents by which the lowest

passions and the most vulgar propensities of man are perpetually kept in the
highest state of excitement—drink, gaming, obscene and blasphemous
language; utter idleness, the almost unrestricted admission of money and
luxuries; uncontrolled conversation with visitors of the very worst
description—prostitutes, thieves, receivers of stolen goods; all the
tumultuous and diversified passions and emotions which circumstances like
these must necessarily generate, forbid the faintest shadow of a hope that in
a soil so unfavourable for moral culture, any awakening truth, salutary
exhortation, or imperfect resolutions of amendment can take root or grow.”
Strong as were the foregoing remarks, the inspectors wound up their
report in still more trenchant language, framing a terrible indictment against
those responsible for the condition of Newgate. Their words deserve to be
quoted in full.
“We cannot close these remarks,” say the inspectors, “without an
expression of the painful feelings with which we submit to your
Lordship[87] this picture of the existing state of Newgate. That in this vast
metropolis, the centre of wealth, civilization, and information; distinguished
as the seat of religion, worth, and philanthropy, where is to be found in
operation every expedient by which Ignorance may be superseded by
Knowledge, Idleness by Industry, and Suffering by Benevolence; that in the
metropolis of this highly-favoured country, to which the eyes of other lands
turn for example, a system of prison discipline such as that enforced in
Newgate should be for a number of years in undisturbed operation, not only
in contempt of religion and humanity, but in opposition to the recorded
denunciations of authority, and in defiance of the express enactments of the
law, is indeed a subject which cannot but impress every considerate mind
with humiliation and sorrow. We trust, however, that the day is at hand
when this stain will be removed from the character of the city of London,
and when the first municipal authority of our land will be no longer
subjected to the reproach of fostering an institution which outrages the
rights and feelings of humanity, defeats the ends of justice, and disgraces
the profession of a Christian country.”
The publication of this report raised a storm in the city, and the
corporation was roused to make an immediate protest. A committee of
aldermen was forthwith appointed to report upon the inspectors’ report, and
the result was another lengthy blue book, printed in the parliamentary
papers, 1836, traversing where it was possible the statements of the

inspectors, and offering explanation and palliation of such evils as could not
be denied. The inspectors retorted without loss of time, reiterating their
charges, and pointing out that the committee of aldermen by its own
admission justified the original allegations. It was impossible to deny the
indiscriminate association; the gambling, drinking, smoking, quarrelling in
the gaol; the undue authority given to prisoners, the levying of garnish
under another name, the neglect of the condemned convicts, the filthy
condition of the wards, the insufficiency of bedding and clothing, the
misemployment of officers and prisoners by the governor. The corporation
evidently had the worst of it, and began to feel the necessity for undertaking
the great work of reform. Next year we find the inspectors expressing their
satisfaction that “the full and faithful exposure which we felt it our duty to
make of Newgate has been productive of at least some advantage, inasmuch
as it has aroused the attention of those upon whom parliamentary reports
and grand jury presentments had hitherto failed to make the slightest
impression.”
The measures of improvement introduced were mainly as follows: the
fixing of “inspection holes” in the doors and walls, so as to insure more
supervision; of windows opening into the well-holes, to give better light
and ventilation; the construction of bed-places, three tiers high alongside
the walls for males, two tiers for females; the provision of dining-rooms and
dining-tables. The infirmary was enlarged, the admission of visitors limited,
and the passing of articles prevented by a wire screen. The windows were to
be glazed and painted to prevent prisoners from looking out; baths,
fumigating places for clothing, wash-house, and the removal of dust-bins,
completed the new arrangements in the main prison. In the press-yard, the
press-room and ward above it were parcelled out into nine separate sleeping
cells; each was provided with an iron bedstead, and a small desk at which
the condemned man might read or write. But the one great and most crying
evil remained unremedied. “The mischief of gaol associations,” say the
inspectors, “which has been demonstrably proved to be the fruitful source
of all the abuses and irregularities which have so long disgraced Newgate,
is not only permitted still to exist in the prison, but is rendered more
powerful than before.”... In endeavouring to arrest contamination, prisoners
were more closely confined, and associated in smaller numbers; but this had
the effect of throwing them into closer contact, and of making them more
intimately acquainted with, more directly influential upon, one another.

In the inspectors’ fourth report, dated 1839, they return to the charge,
and again call the corporation to task for their mismanagement of Newgate.
Abuses and irregularities, which had been partially remedied by the reform
introduced in 1837, were once more in the ascendant. “In our late visits,”
they say, “we have seen manifest indications of a retrograde movement in
this respect, and a tendency to return to much of that laxity and remissness
which formerly marked the management of this prison.” Again the
following year the inspectors repeat their charge. “The prominent evils of
this prison (Newgate)—evils which the alterations made within the last four
years have failed to remove—are the association of prisoners, and the
unusual contamination to which such association gives rise. For nearly
twenty-two hours out of the twenty-four the prisoners are locked up, during
which time no officer is stationed in the ward with them.” They go on to say
—“Newgate is only less extensively injurious than formerly because it is
less crowded. The effects of the imprisonment are to vitiate its inmates, to
extend their acquaintanceship with each other, to corrupt the prisoner
charged with an offence of which he may be innocent, and to confirm in
guilt the young and inexperienced offender.”
The reports as the years flow on reiterate the same complaints. Much
bitterness of feeling is evidently engendered, and the corporation grows
more and more angry with the inspectors. The prison officials appear to be
on the side of the inspectors, to the great dissatisfaction of the corporation,
who claimed the full allegiance and support of its servants. In a resolution
passed by the Court of Aldermen on 18th March, 1842, I find it ordered
“that the ordinary of Newgate be restricted from making any
communications to the Home Office or the Inspectors of Prisons, and that
he be required wholly to confine himself to the performance of his duty as
prescribed by Act of Parliament.” The inspectors were not to be deterred,
however, by any opposition from the earnest discharge of their functions,
and continued to report against Newgate. In their tenth report they state that
they are compelled by an imperative sense of duty to advert in terms of
decided condemnation to the lamentable condition of the prisons of the city
of London,—Newgate, Giltspur St. Compter, and the City Bridewell,—in
which the master evil of gaol association and consequent contamination still
continues to operate directly to the encouragement of crime. “The plan
adopted for ventilating the dining-room on the ‘master’s side’ and that of
the middle yard is very inefficient; it consists of several circular

perforations, about two inches in diameter, slanting downwards from the
top of the walls to the outside adjoining the slaughter-houses of Newgate
market; and occasionally, in hot weather, instead of ventilating the
apartments, they only serve to convey the offensive effluvia arising from
the decaying animal matter into the dining-rooms. Sometimes the stench in
hot weather is said to be very bad. Many rats also come through these so-
called ventilators, as they open close to the ground at the back of the
prison.” At the same time the inspectors animadvert strongly upon the
misconduct of prisoners and the frequency of prison punishments, both
offences and punishments affording a sufficient index to the practices going
forward; and they wind up by declaring that a strict compliance with their
duties gave them no choice “but to report matters as we found them, and
again and again to protest against Newgate as it at present exists.”
No complete and permanent improvement was indeed possible while
Newgate remained unchanged. It was not till the erection of the new prison
at Holloway in 1850, and the entire internal reconstruction of Newgate
according to new ideas, that the evils so justly complained of and detailed
in this chapter were entirely removed. But these are matters which will
occupy a later page in my narrative.

CHAPTER VI.

EXECUTIONS (continued).

Executions not always in front of Newgate after discontinuance of Tyburn—Old Bailey by degrees
monopolizes the business—Description of the new gallows—Same system had already been used
in Dublin—“The fall of the leaf”—Last case of burning before Newgate—Phœbe Harris, in 1788—
Crowds as great as ever at the Old Bailey, and as brutal as of old—Pieman, ballad-monger, and
“rope”-seller did a roaring trade—Governor Wall—His demeanour and dress—Enormous crowd at
Wall’s execution—Also at that of Holloway and Haggerty—Frightful catastrophe and terrible loss
of life in the crowd—The same anticipated at execution of Bellingham, but avoided by extreme
precautions taken—Crowds to see Fauntleroy and Courvoisier suffer—Description of an execution
in 1851—The demeanour, generally, of the condemned—Long protracted uncertainty as to their
fate—Awful levity displayed—Reasons for delay—The Recorder’s report—Its arrival—
Communicated to convicts by chaplain—Tenderness really shown to those certain to die—
Chaplain improves the occasion in preaching the condemned sermon—The chapel service on day it
was preached described—Demeanour of the condemned described in detail—Abstract of a
condemned sermon—Service and returning thanks by the respited the day after the execution—
Callousness of those present—Crowded congregation to hear Courvoisier’s condemned sermon,
and dense throng to see him hanged—Amelioration of the criminal code—Executions more rare—
Capital punishment gradually restricted to murderers—Dissection of the bodies abolished—Some
details of dissection—Public exhibition of bodies also discontinued—The body of Williams, who
murdered the Marrs, so shown—Hanging in chains given up—Failures at executions—Culprits
fight for life—Case of Charles White, of Luigi Buranelli, of William Bousfield—Calcraft and his
method of hanging—Other hangmen—Story of the cost of a hangman.

I PROPOSE to return now to the subject of Newgate executions, which we
left at the time of the discontinuance of the long-practised procession to
Tyburn. The reasons for this change were fully set forth in a previous
chapter.[88] The terrible spectacle was as demoralizing to the public, for
whose admonition it was intended, as the exposure was brutal and cruel
towards the principal actors. The decision to remove the scene of action to
the immediate front of the gaol itself was in the right direction, as making
the performance shorter and diminishing the area of display. But the Old
Bailey was not exclusively used; at first, and for some few years after 1784,
executions took place occasionally at a distance from Newgate. This was
partly due to the survival of the old notion that the scene of the crime ought
also to witness the retribution; partly perhaps because residents in and about
the Old Bailey raised a loud protest against the constant erection of the
scaffold in their neighbourhood. As regards the first, I find that in 1786
John Hogan, the murderer of a Mr. Odell, an attorney who resided in
Charlotte Street, Rathbone Place, was executed on a gibbet in front of his
victim’s house. Lawrence Jones, a burglar, was in 1793 ordered for
execution in Hatton Garden, near the house he had robbed; and when he
evaded the sentence by suicide, his body was exhibited in the same
neighbourhood, “extended upon a plank on the top of an open cart, in his

clothes, and fettered.” Again, as late as 1809 and 1812, Execution Dock, on
the banks of the Thames, was still retained. Here John Sutherland,
commander of the British armed transport ‘The Friends,’ suffered on the
29th June, 1809, for the murder of his cabin-boy, whom he stabbed after
much ill-usage on board the ship as it lay in the Tagus. On the 18th
December, 1812, two sailors, Charles Palm and Sam Tilling, were hanged at
the same place for the murder of their captain, James Keith, of the trading
vessel ‘Adventure,’ upon the high seas. They were taken in a cart to the
place of execution, amidst a vast concourse of people. “Palm, as soon as he
was seated in the cart, put a quid of tobacco into his mouth, and offered
another to his companion, who refused it with indignation.... Some
indications of pity were offered for the fate of Tilling; Palm, execration
alone.”[89]
But the Old Bailey gradually, and in spite of all objections urged,
monopolized the dread business of execution. The first affair of the kind on
this spot was on the 3rd December, 1783, when, in pursuance of an order
issued by the Recorder to the sheriffs of Middlesex and the keeper of His
Majesty’s gaol, Newgate, a scaffold was erected in front of that prison for
the execution of several convicts named by the Recorder. “Ten were
executed; the scaffold hung with black; and the inhabitants of the
neighbourhood, having petitioned the sheriffs to remove the scene of
execution to the old place, were told that the plan had been well considered,
and would be persevered in.” The following 23rd April, it is stated that the
malefactors ordered for execution on the 18th inst. were brought out of
Newgate about eight in the morning, and suspended on a gallows of a new
construction. “After hanging the usual time they were taken down, and the
machine cleared away in half-an-hour. By practice the art is much
improved, and there is no part of the world in which villains are hanged in
so neat a manner, and with so little ceremony.”
A full description of this new gallows, which was erected in front of the
debtors’ door, is to be found in contemporary records. “The criminals are
not exposed to view till they mount the fatal stage. The last part of the
stage, or that next to the gaol, is enclosed by a temporary roof, under which
are placed two seats for the reception of the sheriffs, one on each side of the
stairs leading to the scaffold. Round the north, west, and south sides are
erected galleries for the reception of officers, attendants, &c., and at the
distance of five feet from the same is fixed a strong railing all round the

scaffold to enclose a place for the constables. In the middle of this
machinery is placed a movable platform, in form of a trap-door, ten feet
long by eight wide, on the middle of which is placed the gibbet, extending
from the gaol across the Old Bailey. This movable platform is raised six
inches higher than the rest of the scaffold, and on it the convicts stand; it is
supported by two beams, which are held in their place by bolts. The
movement of the lever withdraws the bolts, the platform falls in;” and this,
being much more sudden and regular than that of a cart being drawn away,
has the effect of immediate death. A broadsheet dated April 24th, 1787,[90]
describing an execution on the newly-invented scaffold before the debtors’
door, Newgate, says, “The scaffold on which these miserable people
suffered is a temporary machine which was drawn out of the yard of the
sessions house by horses; ... it is supported by strong posts fixed into
grooves made in the street; ... the whole is temporary, being all calculated to
take to pieces, which are preserved within the prison.”
This contrivance appears to have been copied with improvements from
that which had been used in Dublin at a still earlier date, for that city claims
the priority in establishing the custom of hanging criminals at the gaol
itself. The Dublin “engine of death,” as the gallows are styled in the account
from which the following description is taken, consisted of an iron bar
parallel to the prison wall, and about four feet from it, but strongly affixed
thereto with iron scroll clamps. “From this bar hang several iron loops, in
which the halters are tied. Under this bar at a proper distance is a piece of
flooring or platform, projecting somewhat beyond the range of the iron bar,
and swinging upon hinges affixed to the wall. The entrance upon this floor
or leaf is from the middle window over the gate of the prison; and this floor
is supported below, while the criminals stand upon it, by two pieces of
timber, which are made to slide in and out of the prison wall through
apertures made for that purpose. When the criminals are tied up and
prepared for their fate, this floor suddenly falls down, upon withdrawing the
supporters inwards. They are both drawn at once by a windlass, and the
unhappy culprits remain suspended.” This mode of execution, it is alleged,
gave rise to the old vulgar “chaff,” “Take care, or you’ll die at the fall of the
leaf.” The machinery in use in Dublin is much the same as that employed at
many gaols now-a-days. But the fall apart and inwards of two leaves is
considered superior. The latter is the method still followed at Newgate.

The sentences inflicted in front of Newgate were not limited to hanging.
In the few years which elapsed between the establishment of the gallows at
Newgate and the abolition of the practice of burning females for petty
treason, more than one woman suffered this penalty at the Old Bailey. One
case is preserved by Catnach, that of Phœbe Harris, who in 1788 was
“barbariously” (sic in the broadsheet) executed and burnt before Newgate
for coining. She is described as a well-made little woman, something more
than thirty years of age, of a pale complexion and not disagreeable features.
“When she came out of prison she appeared languid and terrified, and
trembled greatly as she advanced to the stake, where the apparatus for the
punishment she was about to experience seemed to strike her mind with
horror and consternation, to the exclusion of all power of recollectedness in
preparation for the approaching awful moment.” She walked from the
debtors’ door to a stake fixed in the ground about half-way between the
scaffold and Newgate Street. She was immediately tied by the neck to an
iron bolt fixed near the top of the stake, and after praying fervently for a
few minutes, the steps on which she stood were drawn away, and she was
left suspended. A chain fastened by nails to the stake was then put round her
body by the executioner with his assistants. Two cart-loads of faggots were
piled about her, and after she had hung for half-an-hour the fire was
kindled. The flames presently burned the halter, the body fell a few inches,
and hung then by the iron chain. The fire had not quite burnt out at twelve,
in nearly four hours, that is to say. “A great concourse of people attended on
this melancholy occasion.”
The change from Tyburn to the Old Bailey had worked no improvement
as regards the gathering together of the crowd or its demeanour. As many
spectators as ever thronged to see the dreadful show, and they were packed
into a more limited space, disporting themselves as heretofore by brutal
horse-play, coarse jests, and frantic yells. It was still the custom to offer
warm encouragement or bitter disapproval, according to the character and
antecedents of the sufferer. The highwayman, whose exploits many in the
crowd admired or emulated, was cheered and bidden to die game; the man
of better birth could hope for no sympathy, whatever his crime. At the
execution of Governor Wall, in 1802, the furious hatred of the mob was
plainly apparent in their appalling cries. His appearance on the scaffold was
the signal for three prolonged shouts from an innumerable populace, “the
brutal effusion of one common sentiment.” It was said that so large a crowd

had never collected since the execution of Mrs. Brownrigg, nor had the
public indignation risen so high. Pieman and ballad-monger did their usual
roaring trade amidst the dense throng. No sooner was the “job” finished
than half-a-dozen competitors appeared, each offering the identical rope for
sale at a shilling an inch. One was the “yeoman of the halter,” a Newgate
official, the executioner’s assistant, whom Mr. J. T. Smith,[91] who was
present at the execution, describes as “a most diabolical-looking little
wretch—Jack Ketch’s head man.” The yeoman was, however, under-sold by
his wife, “Rosy Emma,” exuberant in talk and hissing hot from Pie Corner,
where she had taken her morning dose of gin-and-bitters.[92] A little further
off, says Mr. Smith, was “a lath of a fellow past three-score years and ten,
who had just arrived from the purlieus of Black Boy Alley, woebegone as
Romeo’s apothecary, exclaiming, ‘Here’s the identical rope at sixpence an
inch.’ ”
Mr. Smith’s account of the condemned convict, whose cell he was
permitted to enter, may be inserted here. He was introduced by the ordinary,
Dr. Forde, a name familiar to the reader,[93] who met him at the felons’ door
“in his canonicals, and with his head as stiffly erect as a sheriff’s
coachman.” The ordinary “gravely uttered, ‘Come this way, Mr. Smith.’ As
we crossed the press yard a cock crew, and the solitary clanking of a restless
chain was dreadfully horrible. The prisoners had not risen.” They entered a
“stone cold room,” and were presently joined by the prisoner. “He was
death’s counterfeit, tall, shrivelled, and pale; and his soul shot out so
piercingly through the port-holes of his head, that the first glance of him
nearly petrified me.... His hands were clasped, and he was truly penitent.
After the yeoman had requested him to stand up, ‘he pinioned him,’ as the
Newgate phrase is, and tied the cord with so little feeling that the governor
(Wall), who had not given the wretch his accustomed fee, observed, ‘You
have tied me very tight,’ upon which Dr. Forde ordered him to slacken the
cord, which he did, but not without muttering. ‘Thank you, sir,’ said the
governor to the doctor, ‘it is of little moment.’ He then made some
observations to the attendant about the fire, and turning to the doctor,
questioned him. ‘Do tell me, sir; I am informed I shall go down with great
force; is it so?’ After the construction and action of the machine had been
explained, the doctor asked the governor what kind of men he had
commanded at Goree, where the murder for which he was condemned had
been committed. ‘Sir,’ he answered, ‘they sent me the very riff-raff.’ The

poor soul then joined the doctor in prayer, and never did I witness more
contrition at any condemned sermon than he then evinced. The sheriff
arrived, attended by his officers, to receive the prisoner from the keeper. A
new hat was partly flattened on his head, for, owing to its being too small in
the crown, it stood many inches too high behind. As we were crossing the
press yard, the dreadful execrations of some of the felons so shook his
frame that he observed ‘the clock had struck;’ and quickening his pace, he
soon arrived at the room where the sheriff was to give a receipt for his body,
according to the usual custom. Before the colonel[94] had been pinioned he
had pulled out two white handkerchiefs, one of which he bound over his
temples so as nearly to conceal his eyes, the other he kept between his
hands. Over the handkerchief around his brows he placed a white cap, the
new hat being on top of all. He was dressed in a mixed-coloured loose coat
with a black collar, swandown waistcoat, blue pantaloons, and white silk
stockings. Thus apparelled he ascended the stairs at the debtors’ door, and
stepped out on to the platform, to be received, as has been said, by
prolonged yells. These evidently deprived him of the small portion of
fortitude he had summoned up. He bowed his head under extreme pressure
of ignominy, and at his request the ordinary drew the cap further down over
his face, when in an instant, without waiting for any signal, the platform
dropped, and he was launched into eternity.”
Whenever the public attention had been specially called to a particular
crime, either on account of its atrocity, the doubtfulness of the issue, or the
superior position of the perpetrator, the attendance at the execution was
certain to be tumultuous, and the conduct of the mob disorderly. This was
notably the case at the execution of Holloway and Haggerty in 1807, an
event long remembered from the fatal and disastrous consequences which
followed it. They were accused by a confederate, who, goaded by
conscience, had turned approver, of the murder of a Mr. Steele, who kept a
lavender warehouse in the city, and who had gardens at Feltham, whither he
often went to distil the lavender, returning to London the same evening.
One night he was missing, and after a long interval his dead body was
discovered, shockingly disfigured, in a ditch. This was in 1802. Four years
passed without the detection of the murderers, but in the beginning of 1807
one of them, at that time just sentenced to transportation, made a full
confession, and implicated Holloway and Haggerty. They were accordingly
apprehended and brought to trial, the informer, Hanfield by name, being

accepted as king’s evidence. Conviction followed mainly on his testimony;
but the two men, especially Holloway, stoutly maintained their innocence to
the last. Very great excitement prevailed in the town throughout the trial,
and this greatly increased when the verdict was known.
An enormous crowd assembled to witness the execution, amounting, it
was said, to the hitherto unparalleled number of 40,000. By eight o’clock
not an inch of ground in front of the platform was unoccupied. The pressure
soon became so frightful that many would have willingly escaped from the
crowd; but their attempts only increased the general confusion. Very soon
women began to scream with terror; some, especially of low stature, found
it difficult to remain standing, and several, although held up for some time
by the men nearest them, presently fell, and were at once trampled to death.
Cries of Murder! murder! were now raised, and added greatly to the horrors
of the scene. Panic became general. More women, children, and many men
were borne down, to perish beneath the feet of the rest. The most affecting
and distressing scene was at Green Arbour Lane, just opposite the debtors’
door of the prison. Here a couple of piemen had been selling their wares;
the basket of one of them, which was raised upon a four-legged stool, was
upset. The pieman stooped down to pick up his scattered stock, and some of
the mob, not seeing what had happened, stumbled over him. No one who
fell ever rose again. Among the rest was a woman with an infant at the
breast. She was killed, but in the act of falling she forced her child into the
arms of a man near her, and implored him in God’s name to save it; the
man, needing all his care for his own life, threw the child from him, and it
passed along the heads of the crowd, to be caught at last by a person who
struggled with it to a cart and deposited it there in safety. In another part
seven persons met their death by suffocation.
In this convulsive struggle for bare existence people fought fiercely with
one another, and the weakest, of course the women, went under. One cart-
load of spectators having broken down, some of its occupants fell off the
vehicle, and were instantly trampled to death. This went on for more than
an hour, and until the malefactors were cut down and the gallows removed;
then the mob began to thin, and the streets were cleared by the city marshals
and a number of constables. The catastrophe exceeded the worst
anticipations. Nearly one hundred dead and dying lay about; and after all
had been removed, the bodies for identification, the wounded to hospitals, a
cart-load of shoes, hats, petticoats, and fragments of wearing apparel were

picked up. St. Bartholomew’s Hospital was converted into an impromptu
Morgue, and all persons who had relatives missing were admitted to
identify them. Among the dead was a sailor lad whom no one knew; he had
his pockets filled with bread and cheese, and it was generally supposed that
he had come a long distance to see the fatal show.

Bellingham, who murdered
Mr. Spencer Percival.

A tremendous crowd assembled when Bellingham was executed in 1812
for the murder of Spencer Percival, at that time prime minister; but there
were no serious accidents, beyond those caused by the goring of a
maddened, over-driven ox which forced its way through the crowd.
Precautions had been taken by the erection of barriers, and the posting of
placards at all the avenues to the Old Bailey, on which was printed,
“Beware of entering the crowd! Remember thirty poor persons were
pressed to death by the crowd when Haggerty and Holloway were
executed!” The concourse was very great, notwithstanding these warnings.
It was still greater at Fauntleroy’s execution in 1824, when no less than
100,000 persons assembled, it was said. Every window and roof which
could command a view of the horrible performance was occupied. All the
avenues and approaches, places even whence nothing whatever could be
seen of the scaffold, were blocked by persons who had overflowed from the
area in front of the gaol. At Courvoisier’s execution in 1840 it was the
same, or worse. As early as six a.m. the number assembled already

exceeded that seen on ordinary occasions; by seven a.m. the whole space
was so thronged that it was impossible to move one way or the other. Some
persons were kept for more than five hours standing against the barriers,
and many nearly fainted from exhaustion. Every window had its party of
occupants; the adjoining roofs were equally crowded. High prices were
asked and paid for front seats or good standing room. As much as £5 was
given for the attic story of the Lamb’s Coffee House; £2 was a common
price for a window. At the George public-house to the south of the drop, Sir
W. Watkin Wynn, Bart., hired a room for the night and morning, which he
and a large party of friends occupied before and during the execution; in an
adjoining house, that of an undertaker, was Lord Alfred Paget, also with
several friends. Those who had hired apartments spent the night in them,
keeping up their courage with liquids and cigars. Numbers of ladies were
present, although the public feeling was much against their attendance. One
well-dressed woman fell out of a first-floor window on to the shoulders of
the crowd below, but neither she nor any one else was greatly hurt. The city
authorities had endeavoured to take all precautions against panic and
excitement among the crowd, and caused a number of stout additional
barriers to be erected in front of the scaffold, and although one of these
gave way owing to the extraordinary pressure, no serious accident occurred.
Some years later an eye-witness published a graphic account of one of
these scenes.[95] Soon after midnight on the Sunday night, for by this time
the present practice of executing on Monday morning had been pretty
generally introduced, the crowd began to congregate in and about the Old
Bailey. Gin-shops and coffee-houses were the first to open doors, and touts
began to bid for tenants for the various rooms upstairs. Cries of
“Comfortable room!” “Excellent situation!” “Beautiful prospect!”
“Splendid view!” resounded on every side. By this time the workmen might
be heard busily erecting the gallows; the sounds of hammer and saw
intermingled with the broad jeers and coarse jests of the rapidly increasing
mob. One by one the huge uprights of black timber were fitted together,
until presently the huge stage loomed dark above the crowd which was now
ranged round the barriers; a throng of people whom neither rain, snow,
storm, nor darkness ever hindered from attending the show. They were
mainly members of the criminal

PREPARING FOR AN EXECUTION.

classes; their conversation was of companions and associates of former
years, long ago imprisoned, transported, hanged, while they, hoary-headed
and hardened in guilt, were still at large. They talked of the days when the
convicts were hung up a dozen or more in a row; of those who had shown
the white, and those who had died game. The approaching ceremony had
evidently no terrors for these “idolaters of the gallows.” With them were
younger men and women: the former already vowed to the same criminal
career, and looking up to their elders with the respect due to successful
practitioners; the latter unsexed and brutalized by dissipation, slipshod and
slovenly, in crushed bonnet and dirty shawl, the gown fastened by a single
hook, their harsh and half-cracked voices full of maudlin, besotted
sympathy for those about to die. “Above the murmur and tumult of that
noisy assembly, the lowing and bleating of cattle as they were driven into
the stalls and pens of Smithfield fell with a strange unnatural sound upon
the ear.... Hush! the unceasing murmur of the mob now breaks into a loud
deep roar, a sound as if the ocean had suddenly broken through some
ancient boundary, against which its ever restless billows had for ages
battered; the wide dark sea of heads is all at once in motion; each wave
seems trying to overleap the other as they are drawn onwards towards this

outlet. Every link in that great human chain is shaken, along the whole
lengthened line has the motion jarred, and each in turn sees, coiled up on
the floor of the scaffold like a serpent, the hangman’s rope! The human
hand that placed it there was only seen for a moment, as it lay, white and
ghastly, upon the black boards, and then again was as suddenly withdrawn,
as if ashamed of the deed it had done. The loud shout of the multitude once
more subsided, or only fell upon the abstracted ear like the dreamy murmur
of an ocean shell. Then followed sounds more distinct and audible, in which
ginger-beer, pies, fried fish, sandwiches, and fruit were vended under the
names of notorious murderers, highwaymen, and criminals, famous in the
annals of Newgate for the hardihood they had displayed in the hour of
execution, when they terminated their career of crime at the gallows.
Threading his way among these itinerant vendors was seen the meek-faced
deliverer of tracts, the man of good intentions, now bonneted, now laughed
at, the skirt of his seedy black coat torn across; yet, though pulled right and
left, or sent headlong into the crowd by the swing of some brutal and
muscular arm, never once from that pale face passed away its benign and
patient expression, but ever the same form moved along in the fulfilment of
his mission, in spite of all persecution. Another fight followed the score
which had already taken place; this time two women were the combatants.
Blinded with their long hair, they tore at each other like two furies; their
bonnets and caps were trodden underfoot in the kennel, and lay disregarded
beside the body of the poor dog which, while searching for its master in the
crowd, was an hour before kicked to death by the savage and brutal mob.
“Another deep roar, louder than any which had preceded it, broke from
the multitude. Then came the cry of ‘Hats off!’ and ‘Down in front!’ as at a
theatre. It was followed by the deep and solemn booming of the death-bell
from the church of St. Sepulchre—the iron knell that rang upon the beating
heart of the living man who was about to die; and with blanched cheek, and
sinking, we turned away from the scene.”
In thus describing the saturnalia before the gallows I have been drawn on
somewhat beyond the period with which I am at present dealing. Let me
retrace my steps, and speak more in detail of the treatment of the
condemned in those bloodthirsty and brutally indifferent days, and of their
demeanour after sentence until the last penalty was paid. One of the worst
evils was the terrible and long-protracted uncertainty as to the result. In the
case of convicted murderers only was prompt punishment inflicted, and

with them indeed this despatch amounted to undue precipitancy. Forty-eight
hours was the limit of time allowed to the unhappy man to make his peace,
and during that time he was still kept on a bare allowance of bread and
water. But the murderers formed only a small proportion of the total number
sentenced to death, and for the rest there was a long period of anxious
suspense, although in the long run mercy generally prevailed, and very few
capitally convicted for crimes less than murder actually suffered. Thus in
the years between May 1st, 1827, and 30th April, 1831, no less than four
hundred and fifty-one sentences of death for capital crimes were passed at
the Old Bailey; but of these three hundred and ninety-six were reversed by
the king in council, and only fifty-two were really executed. Already the
severity of our criminal code, and the number of capital felonies upon the
statute book, had brought a reaction; and while the courts adhered to the
letter of the law, appeals were constantly made to the royal prerogative of
mercy. This was more particularly the practice in London. Judges on assize
were satisfied with simply recording a sentence of death against offenders
whom they did not think deserved the extreme penalty. At the Old Bailey
almost every one capitally convicted by a jury was sentenced to be hanged.
The result in the latter case was left in the first place to the king in council,
but there was a further appeal then, as now, to the king himself, or
practically to the Home Secretary. Neither in town or country were cases
entirely taken on their own merits. Convicted offenders might have good or
bad luck; they might be arraigned when their particular crime was
uncommon, and were then nearly certain to escape; or theirs might be one
of many, and it might be considered necessary to “make an example.” In
this latter it might fairly be said that a man was put to death less for his own
sins than for the crimes of others.
The absurdity of the system, its irregularity and cruelty, were fully
touched upon by the inspectors of prisons in their first report. They found at
Newgate, under disgraceful conditions as already described,[96] seventeen
capital convicts, upon all of whom the sentence of death had been passed.
Eventually two only of the whole number suffered; two others were
sentenced to three months’ imprisonment, and the balance to varying terms.
Nothing could be more strongly marked than the contrast between the
ultimate destiny of different individuals all abiding the same awful doom:
on the one hand the gallows, on the other a short imprisonment. The
inspectors very properly desired to call attention to the inevitable tendency

in this mode of dealing with “the most awful sanctions of the law,” to make
those sanctions an object of contemptuous mockery. The consequences
were plainly proved to the inspectors. Capitally convicted prisoners did, as
a matter of fact, “treat with habitual and inexpressible levity the sentence of
death.” Of this I have treated at length in the last chapter.
The time thus spent varied considerably, but it was seldom less than six
weeks. It all depended upon the sovereign’s disposition to do business.
Sometimes the Privy Council did not meet for months, and during all that
time the convicts languished with hope nearly indefinitely deferred. When
the council had decided, the news was conveyed to Newgate by the
Recorder, who made his “report,” as it was called. The time of the arrival of
this report was generally known at Newgate, and its contents were
anxiously awaited by both convicts in the press-yard and their friends
collected in a crowd outside the gates. Sometimes the report was delayed.
On one occasion, Mr. Wakefield tells us, the Recorder, who had attended
the council at Windsor, did not deliver the report till the following day. “The
prisoners and their friends, therefore, were kept in a state of the most
violent suspense for many hours, during which they counted the moments—
the prisoners in their cells as usual, and their friends in the street in front of
Newgate, where they passed the night. I have heard the protracted agony of
both classes described by those who witnessed it in terms so strong, that I
am unwilling to repeat them.”...[97] “The crowd of men and women who
passed the night in front of Newgate, began, as soon as the hour was passed
when they had expected the report, to utter imprecations against the
Recorder, the Secretary of State, the Council, and the King; they never
ceased cursing until the passion of anger so excited was exchanged for joy
in some and grief in others. I myself heard more than one of those whose
lives were spared by that decision of the council, afterwards express a wish
to murder the Recorder for having kept them so long in suspense.”
The Recorder’s report generally reached Newgate late at night. Its
receipt was immediately followed by the promulgation of its contents to the
persons most closely concerned, which was done with a sort of ceremony
intended to be impressive. The whole of the convicts were assembled
together in one ward, and made to kneel down. To them entered the
chaplain or ordinary of Newgate in full canonicals, who in solemn tones
communicated to each in turn the fate in store for him. The form of
imparting the intelligence was generally the same. “So-and-so, I am sorry to

tell you that it is all against you;” or, “A. B., your case has been taken into
consideration by the king in council, and His Majesty has been mercifully
pleased to spare your life.” The fatal news was not always received in the
same way. The men who were doomed often fell down in convulsions upon
the floor. Sometimes any who had had a narrow escape fainted, but the bulk
of those respited looked on with unfeeling indifference. The concluding part
of the ceremony was, for those who had been pardoned, to recite a
thanksgiving to God and the king.
It is satisfactory to be able to record that some consideration was shown
the capital convict actually awaiting execution. Even so severe a critic as
Mr. Wakefield states that “a stranger to the scene would be astonished to
observe the peculiar tenderness, I was going to add respect, which persons
under sentence of death obtain from all the officers of the prison. Before
sentence a prisoner has only to observe the regulations of the gaol in order
to remain neglected and unnoticed. Once ordered to the cells, friends of all
classes suddenly rise up; his fellow-prisoners, the turnkeys, the chaplain,
the keepers, and the sheriffs all seem interested in his fate, and he can make
no reasonable request that is not at once granted by whomsoever he may
address. This rule has some, but very few, exceptions; such as where a
hardened offender behaves with great levity and brutality, as if he cared
nought for his life, and thought every one anxious to promote his death.”
Mr. Wakefield goes on to remark that persons convicted of forgery “excited
an extraordinary degree of interest in all who approached them.” This was
noticeable with Fauntleroy, who, on account of his birth and antecedents,
was allowed to occupy a turnkey’s room, and kept altogether separate from
the other prisoners until the day of his death. It cannot be denied, however,
that the ordinary’s treatment was somewhat unfeeling, and in proof thereof I
will quote an extract from the reverend gentleman’s own journal. He seems
to have improved the occasion when preaching the condemned sermon
before Fauntleroy, by pointing a moral from that unhappy man’s own case.
For this the chaplain was a few days later summoned before the gaol
committee of aldermen, and informed that the public would not in future be
admitted to hear the condemned sermon. “I was also informed,” writes Mr.
Cotton, “that this resolution was in consequence of their (the aldermen’s)
disapproving of the last discourse delivered by me, previous to the
execution of Henry Fauntleroy for uttering a forged security, in which it
was said I had enlarged upon the heinous nature of his crime, and warned

the public to avoid such conduct. I was informed that this unnecessarily
harassed his feelings, and that the object of such sermons was solely to
console the prisoner, and that from the time of his conviction nothing but
what is consolatory should be addressed to a criminal. One of the aldermen,
moreover, informed me that the whole court of aldermen were unanimous
in their opinion on this subject. As to the exclusion of strangers on these
occasions, the experience I have had convinces me that one, and perhaps
the only, good of an execution, i. e. the solemn admonition to the public,
will thereby be lost.”
Probably the reader will side with the aldermen against the ordinary.
This episode throws some doubt upon the tenderness and proper feeling
exhibited by the chaplain towards the most deserving members of his
criminal flock; and the idea will be strengthened by the following account
of the Sunday service in the prison chapel on the occasion when the
condemned sermon was preached. The extract is from Mr. E. Gibbon
Wakefield’s brochure, the date 1828, just three years after Fauntleroy’s
death. Strangers were now excluded, but the sheriffs attended in state,
wearing their gold chains, while behind their pew stood a couple of tall
footmen in state liveries. The sheriffs were in one gallery; in the other
opposite were the convicts capitally convicted who had been respited.
Down below between the galleries was the mass of the prison population;
the schoolmaster and the juvenile prisoners being seated round the
communion-table, opposite the pulpit. In the centre of the chapel was the
condemned pew, a large dock-like erection painted black. Those who sat in
it were visible to the whole congregation, and still more to the ordinary,
whose desk and pulpit were just in front of the condemned pew, and within
a couple of yards of it. The occupants of this terrible black pew were the
last always to enter the chapel. Upon the occasion which I am describing
they were four in number; and here I will continue the narrative in Mr.
Wakefield’s own words:—
“First is a youth of eighteen, condemned for stealing in a dwelling-house
goods valued above five pounds. His features have no felonious cast; ... he
steps boldly with head upright, looks to the women’s gallery, and smiles.
His intention is to pass for a brave fellow, but the attempt fails; he trembles,
his knees knock together, and his head droops as he enters the condemned
pew. The next convict is clearly and unmistakably a villain. He is a
hardened offender, previously cast for life, reprieved, transported to

Australia, and since returned without pardon. For this offence the
punishment is death. He has, however, doubly earned his sentence, and is
actually condemned for burglary committed since his arrival in England.
His look at the sheriffs and the ordinary is full of scorn and defiance. The
third convict is a sheep-stealer, a poor ignorant fellow in whose crime are
mitigating circumstances, but who is left to die on the supposition that this
is not his first conviction, and still more because a good many sheep have of
late been stolen by other people. He is quite content to die; indeed the
chaplain and others have brought him firmly to believe that his situation is
enviable, and that the gates of heaven are open to receive him.” The last of
the four is said to have been a clergyman of the Church of England,[98]
condemned for forgery, “a miserable old man in a tattered suit of black.
Already he is half dead. Great efforts have been made to save his life.
Friends, even utter strangers, have interceded for him, and to the last he has
buoyed himself up by hope of reprieve. Now his doom is sealed
irrevocably, and he has given himself up to despair. He staggers towards the
pew, reels into it, stumbles forward, flings himself on the ground, and, by a
curious twist of the spine, buries his head under his body. The sheriffs
shudder, their inquisitive friends crane forward, the keeper frowns on the
excited congregation, the lately smirking footmen close their eyes and
forget their liveries, the ordinary clasps his hands, the turnkeys cry ‘Hush!’
and the old clerk lifts up his cracked voice, saying, ‘Let us sing to the praise
and glory of God.’
“The morning hymn is sung first, as if to remind the condemned that
next morning at eight a.m. they are to die. The service proceeds. At last the
burial service is reached. The youth alone is able to read, but from long
want of practice he is at a loss to find the place in his prayer-book. The
ordinary observes him, looks to the sheriffs, and says aloud, ‘The service
for the dead!’ The youth’s hands tremble as they hold the book upside
down. The burglar is heard to mutter an angry oath. The sheep-stealer
smiles, and, extending his arms upwards, looks with a glad expression to
the roof of the chapel. The forger has never moved.
“Let us pass on. All have sung ‘the Lamentation of a Sinner,’ and have
seemed to pray ‘especially for those now awaiting the awful execution of
the law.’ We come to the sermon.
“The ordinary of Newgate is an orthodox, unaffected, Church of England
divine, who preaches plain, homely discourses, as fit as any religious

discourse can be fit for the irritated audience. The sermon of this day,
whether eloquent or plain, useful or useless, must produce a striking effect
at the moment of its delivery. The text, without another word, is enough to
raise the wildest passions of the audience.... For a while the preacher
addresses himself to the congregation at large, who listen attentively—
except the clergyman and the burglar, the former of whom is still rolled up
at the bottom of the condemned pew, while the eyes of the latter are
wandering round the chapel, and one of them is occasionally winked
impudently at some acquaintance amongst the prisoners for trial. At length
the ordinary pauses, and then, in a deep tone, which, though hardly above a
whisper, is audible to all, says, ‘Now for you, my poor fellow mortals, who
are about to suffer the last penalty of the law.’ But why should I repeat the
whole? It is enough to say that in the same solemn tone he talks about the
minutest of crimes, punishments, bonds, shame, ignominy, sorrow,
sufferings, wretchedness, pangs, childless parents, widows and helpless
orphans, broken and contrite hearts, and death to-morrow morning for the
benefit of society. What happens? The dying men are dreadfully agitated.
The young stealer in a dwelling-house no longer has the least pretence to
bravery. He grasps the back of the pew, his legs give way, he utters a faint
groan, and sinks on the floor. Why does no one stir to help him? Where
would be the use? The hardened burglar moves not, nor does he speak; but
his face is of an ashy paleness; and if you look carefully you may see the
blood trickling from his lip, which he has bitten unconsciously, or from
rage, or to rouse his fainting courage. The poor sheep-stealer is in a frenzy.
He throws his hands far from him, and shouts aloud, ‘Mercy, good Lord!
mercy is all I ask. The Lord in His mercy come! There! there! I see the
Lamb of God! Oh! how happy! Oh! this is happy!’ Meanwhile the
clergyman, still bent into the form of a sleeping dog, struggles violently; his
feet, legs, hands, and arms, even the muscles of his back, move with a
quick, jerking motion, not naturally, but, as it were, like the affected parts of
a galvanized corpse. Suddenly he utters a short sharp scream, and all is still.
“The silence is short. As the ordinary proceeds ‘to conclude,’ the women
set up a yell, which is mixed with a rustling noise, occasioned by the
removal of those whose hysterics have ended in fainting. The sheriffs cover
their faces, and one of their inquisitive friends blows his nose with his
glove. The keeper tries to appear unmoved, but his eye wanders anxiously
over the combustible assembly. The children round the communion-table

stare and gape with childish wonder. The two masses of prisoners for trial
undulate and slightly murmur, while the capital convicts who were lately in
that black pew appear faint with emotion.
“This exhibition lasts for some minutes, and then the congregation
disperses, the condemned returning to the cells: the forger carried by
turnkeys; the youth sobbing aloud convulsively, as a passionate child; the
burglar muttering curses and savage expressions of defiance; whilst the
poor sheep-stealer shakes hands with the turnkeys, whistles merrily, and
points upwards with madness in his look.”
Mr. Wakefield winds up his graphic but somewhat sensational account
by describing another religious service, which may appropriately be
inserted here. He says, “On the day of execution there is no service in the
chapel of Newgate. On the following day the capital convicts, whose
companions have been hanged, are required to return thanks for their
narrow escape. The firmest disbeliever in religion, if he had not lately been
irritated by taking part in such a scene as the condemned service in
Newgate, could hardly witness this ceremony without being affected. The
men, who were so lately snatched from the jaws of death, kneel, whilst the
rest of the congregation sit, and the ordinary, in a tone of peculiar solemnity,
says, ‘Almighty God, Father of all mercies, we thine unworthy servants do
give thee most humble and hearty thanks for all thy goodness and loving-
kindness to us, and to all men; particularly to those who desire now to offer
up their praises and thanksgivings for thy late mercies vouchsafed unto
them.’ Could any one, knowing the late situation of the kneeling men,
looking as they do at the empty pew, occupied when they saw it last, but a
few hours ago, by their comrades who are now dead; could any one, not
disgusted with the religious ceremonials of Newgate, witness this scene
without emotion? Hardly any one. But what are the feelings of those who
take part in it? I have been present at the scene not less than twenty times,
and have invariably observed that many of the kneeling men or boys
laughed while they knelt, pinched each other, and, when they could do so
without fear of being seen by any officer of the prison, winked at other
prisoners in derision of what was taking place; and I have frequently heard
men and lads who had been of the kneeling party boast to their companions
after the service that they had wiped their eyes during the thanksgiving, to
make the ordinary believe they had been crying.”

Although this misapplication of religious services still went on, the
outside public continued to be excluded from the Newgate chapel on the
day the condemned sermon was preached. This very proper rule was,
however, set aside on the Sunday preceding Courvoisier’s execution. So
many applications for admission were made to the sheriffs, that they
reluctantly agreed to open the gallery which had formerly been occupied by
strangers on these occasions. Cards were issued, and to such an extent, that
although the service was not to commence till half-past ten, by nine a.m. all
the avenues to the prison gates were blocked by ticket-holders. In spite of
the throng, owing to the excellent arrangements made by the sheriffs, no
inconvenience was suffered by the congregation, among whom were Lord
Adolphus Fitz Clarence, Lord Coventry, Lord Paget, Lord Bruce, several
members of the House of Commons, and a few ladies. Contemporary
accounts give a minute description of the demeanour of the convict upon
this solemn occasion. He sat on a bench before the pulpit,—the hideous
condemned pew had been swept away,—and never once raised his eyes
during the service. “In fact his looks denoted extreme sorrow and contrition,
and he seemed to suffer great inward agitation when the ordinary
particularly alluded to the crime for the perpetration of which he stood
condemned.” Mr. Carver, the ordinary, appears to have addressed himself
directly to Courvoisier, and to have dwelt with more emphasis than good
taste upon the nature of the crime, and the necessity for repentance. But the
chaplain admitted that the solitude of the convict’s cell was more
appropriate for serious reflection and profitable ministration than “this
exciting occasion before a large and public assembly.” So far as I can find,
Courvoisier was the last condemned criminal who was thus exhibited to a
crowd of morbidly curious spectators.
The atrocity of the murder no doubt attracted extraordinary attention to
it. The crowd outside Newgate on the day of execution has already been
described; but there was also a select gathering of distinguished visitors
within the gaol. First came the sheriffs, the under-sheriffs, and several
aldermen and city officials, then Lord Powerscourt and several other peers
of the realm. Mr. Charles Kean the tragedian was also present, drawn to this
terrible exhibition by the example of his father, the more celebrated
Edmund Kean, who had witnessed the execution of Thistlewood “with a
view,” as he himself said, “to his professional studies.”

But there is little doubt that as executions became more rare they made
more impression on the public mind. Already a strong dislike to the reckless
and almost indiscriminate application of the extreme penalty was apparent
in all classes, and the mitigation of the criminal code, for which Romilly
had so strenuously laboured, was daily more and more of an accomplished
fact. In 1832 capital punishment was abolished for forgery, except in cases
of forging or altering wills or powers of attorney to transfer stock.
Nevertheless, after that date no person whatever was executed for this
offence. In the same year capital punishment was further restricted, and
ceased to be the legal sentence for coining, sheep or horse stealing, and
stealing in a dwelling-house. House-breaking, as distinguished from
burglary, was similarly exempted in the following year; next, the offences
of returning from transportation, stealing post-office letters, and sacrilege
were no longer punishable with death. In 1837 Lord John Russell’s acts
swept away a number of capital offences, including cutting and maiming,
rick-burning, robbery, burglary, and arson. Within a couple of years the
number of persons sentenced to death in England had fallen from four
hundred and thirty-eight in 1837 to fifty-six in 1839. Gradually the
application of capital punishment became more and more restricted, and
was soon the penalty for murder alone. While in London, for instance, in
1829, twenty-four persons had been executed for crimes other than murder,
from 1832 to 1844 not a single person had been executed in the metropolis
except for this the gravest crime. In 1837 the death penalty was practically
limited to murder or attempts to murder, and in 1841 this was accepted as
the almost universally established rule. Seven other crimes, however, were
still capital by law, and so continued till the passing of the Criminal
Consolidation Acts of 1861.
With the amelioration of the criminal code, other cruel concomitants of
execution also disappeared. In 1832 the dissection of bodies cut down from
the gallows, which had been decreed centuries previously,[99] was
abolished; the most recent enactment in force was the 9th Geo. IV. cap. 31,
which directed the dissection of all bodies of executed murderers, the idea
being to intensify the dread of capital punishment. That such dread was not
universal or deep-seated may be gathered from the fact that authentic cases
were known previous to the first cited act of criminals selling their own
bodies to surgeons for dissection. This dissection was carried out for
Newgate prisoners in Surgeons’ Hall, adjoining Newgate, the site of the

present Sessions House of the Old Bailey, and the operation was witnessed
by students and a number of curious spectators. Lord Ferrers’ body was
brought to Surgeons’ Hall after execution in his own carriage and six; after
the post mortem had been carried out, the corpse was exposed to view in a
first-floor room. Pennant speaks of Surgeons’ Hall as a handsome building,
ornamented with Ionic pilasters, and with a double flight of steps to the first
floor. Beneath is a door for the admission of the bodies of murderers and
other felons. There were other public dissecting rooms for criminals. One
was attached to Hicks’ Hall, the Clerkenwell Sessions House, built out of
monies provided by Sir Baptist Hicks, a wealthy alderman of the reign of
James I.[100] Persons were still living in 1855 who had witnessed
dissections at Hicks’ Hall, and “whom the horrid scene, with the additional
effect of some noted criminals hanging on the walls, drove out again sick
and faint, as we have heard some relate, and with pale and terrified features,
to get a breath of air.”[101] The dissection of executed criminals was
abolished soon after the discovery of the crime of burking, with the idea
that ignominy would no longer attach to an operation which ceased to be
compulsory for the most degraded beings; and that executors or persons
having lawful possession of the bodies of people who had died friendless,
would voluntarily surrender them for the advancement of medical science.
Another brutal practice had nearly disappeared about the time of the
abolition of dissection. This was the public exhibition of the body, as was
done in the case of Mrs. Phipoe, the murderess, who was executed in front
of Newgate in 1798, and “her body

EXHIBITION OF BODY OF WILLIAMS.

publicly exhibited in a place built for the purpose in the Old Bailey.” About
this time I find that the bodies of two murderers, Clench and Mackay, “were
publicly exposed in a stable in Little Bridge Street, near Apothecaries’ Hall,
Surgeons’ Hall being let to the lieutenancy of the county for the
accommodation of the militia.” In 1811 Williams, who murdered the Marrs
in Ratcliffe Highway,[102] having committed suicide in gaol to escape
hanging, it was determined that a public exhibition should be made of the
body through the neighbourhood which had been the scene of the monster’s
crimes. A long procession was formed, headed by constables, who cleared
the way with their staves. Then came the newly-formed horse patrol, with
drawn cutlasses, parish officers, peace officers, the high constable of the
county of Middlesex on horseback, and then the body of Williams,
“extended at full length on an inclined platform erected on the cart, about
four feet high at the head, and gradually sloping towards the horse, giving a
full view of the body, which was dressed in blue trousers and a blue-and-
white striped waistcoat, but without a coat, as when found in the cell. On
the left side of the head the fatal mall, and on the right the ripping chisel,
with which the murders had been committed, were exposed to view. The
countenance of Williams was ghastly in the extreme, and the whole had an
appearance too horrible for description.” The procession traversed Ratcliffe
twice, halting for a quarter of an hour in front of the victims’ dwelling, and
was accompanied throughout by “an immense concourse of persons, eager
to get a sight of the murderer’s remains.... All the shops in the

neighbourhood were shut, and the windows and tops of the houses were
crowded with spectators.”
Hanging in chains upon the gibbet which had served for the execution,
or on another specially erected on some commanding spot, had fallen into
disuse by 1832. But there was an attempt to revive it at that date, when the
act for dispensing with the dissection of criminals was passed. A clause was
inserted to the effect that “the bodies of all prisoners convicted of murder
should either be hung in chains, or buried under the gallows on which they
had been executed, ... according to the discretion of the court before whom
the prisoners might be tried.” The revival of this barbarous practice caused
much indignation in certain quarters, but it was actually tried in two
provincial towns, Leicester and Durham. At the first-named the exhibition
nearly created a tumult, and the body was taken down and buried, but not
before the greatest scandal had been caused by the unseemly proceedings of
the crowd that flocked to see the sight. A sort of fair was held, gaming-
tables were set up, cards were played under the gibbet, to the disturbance of
the public peace and the annoyance of all decent people.[103] At Jarrow
Stake, where the Durham murderer’s body was exposed, there were similar
scenes, mingled with compassion for the culprit’s family, and a subscription
was set on foot for them then and there at the foot of the gibbet. Later on,
after dark, some friends of the deceased stole the body and buried it in the
sand, and this was the end of hanging in chains. After this a law was passed
which prescribed that the bodies of all executed murderers should be buried
within the walls of the gaol.
Although these objectionable practices had disappeared, there were still
many shocking incidents at executions, owing to the bungling and unskilful
way in which the operation was performed. The rope still broke sometimes,
although it was not often that the horrid scene seen at Jersey at the
beginning of the century was repeated. There the hangman added his weight
to that of the suspended culprit, and having first pulled him sideways, then
got upon his shoulders, so that the rope broke. “To the great surprise of all
who witnessed this dreadful scene, the poor criminal rose straight upon his
feet, with the hangman on his shoulders, and immediately loosened the rope
with his fingers.” After this the sheriffs sent for another rope, but the
spectators interfered, and the man was carried back to gaol. The whole case
was referred to the king, and the poor wretch, whose crime had been a
military one, was eventually pardoned. A somewhat similar event happened

at Chester not long afterwards; the ropes by which two offenders were
turned off broke a few inches from their necks. They were taken back to
gaol, and were again brought out in the afternoon, by which time fresh and
stronger ropes had been procured, and the sentence was properly and
completely carried out. Other cases might be quoted, especially that of
William Snow, alias Sketch, who slipped from the gallows at Exeter and
fell to the ground. He soon rose to his feet, and hearing the sorrowful
exclamations of the populace, coolly said, “Good people, do not be hurried;
I am not, I can wait.”
Similar cases were not wanting as regards the executions before
Newgate. Others were not less horrible, although there was no failure of
apparatus. Sometimes the condemned man made a hard fight for life. When
Charles White was executed in 1823 for arson, he arranged a handkerchief
in such a way that the executioner found a difficulty in pinioning his hands.
White managed to keep his wrists asunder, and continued to struggle with
the officials for some time. Eventually he was pinioned with a cord in the
usual manner. On the scaffold he made a violent attempt to loosen his
bonds, and succeeded in getting his hands free. Then with a strong effort he
pushed off the white cap, and tried to liberate his neck from the halter,
which by this time had been adjusted. The hangman summoned assistance,
and with help tied the cap over White’s face with a handkerchief. The
miserable wretch during the whole of this time was struggling with the most
determined violence, to the great horror of the spectators. Still he resisted,
and having got from the falling drop to the firm part of the platform, he
nearly succeeded in tearing the handkerchief from his eyes. However, the
ceremony went forward, and when the signal was given the drop sank. The
wretched man did not fall with it, but jumped on to the platform, and
seizing the rope with his hands, tried to avoid strangulation. The spectacle
was horrible; the convict was half on the platform, half hanging, and the
convulsions of his body were appalling. The crowd vociferously yelled their
disapproval, and at length the executioner forced the struggling criminal
from the platform, so that the rope sustained his whole weight. His face was
visible to the whole crowd, and was fearful to behold. Even now his
sufferings were not at an end, and his death was not compassed until the
executioner terminated his sufferings by hanging on to his legs.
When Luigi Buranelli was executed in 1855, through the improper
adjustment of the rope his sufferings were prolonged for five minutes; “his

chest heaved, and it was evident that his struggle was a fearful one.”[104] A
worse case still was that of William Bousfield, who, when awaiting
execution for murder, about the same date, had attempted to throw himself
upon the fire in his condemned cell. He was in consequence so weak when
brought out for execution, that he had to be carried by four men, two
supporting his body and two his legs. His wretched, abject condition, seated
in a chair under the drop, was such as almost to unnerve the executioner
Calcraft, who bad been further upset by a letter threatening to shoot him
when he appeared to perform his task. Calcraft, the moment he had adjusted
the cap and rope, ran down the steps, drew the bolt, and disappeared. “For a
second or two the body hung motionless, then, with a strength that
astonished the attendant officials, Bousfield slowly drew himself up, and
rested with his feet on the right side of the drop. One of the turnkeys rushed
forward and pushed him off. Again the wretched creature succeeded in
obtaining foothold, but this time on the left side of the drop.” Calcraft was
forced to return, and he once more pushed Bousfield off, who for the fourth
time regained his foothold. Again he was repelled, this time Calcraft adding
his weight to the body, and the strangulation was completed.
It was stated in evidence before the Commission on Capital Punishment
in 1864, that Calcraft’s method of hanging was very rough, much the same
as if he had been hanging a dog. There has never been much science in the
system of carrying out the extreme penalty in this country; the “finisher of
the law” has come more by chance than fitness or special education to
exercise his loathsome office. Calcraft, of whom mention has just been
made, was by trade a lady’s shoemaker, and before he took to hanging he
was employed as a watchman at Reid’s brewery in Liquorpond Street. He
was at first engaged as assistant to the executioner Tom Cheshire, but in due
course rose to be chief. He was always known as a mild-mannered man of
simple tastes, much given to angling in the New River, and a devoted rabbit
fancier. He was well known in the neighbourhood where he resided, and the
street gamins cried “Jack Ketch” as he went along the street. While Calcraft
was in office other aspirants to fame appeared in the field. One was Askern,
who had been a convicted prisoner at York, but who consented to act as
hangman when Calcraft was engaged, and no other functionary could be
obtained. It was not always easy to hire a hangman. There is still extant a
curious petition presented to the Treasury by Ralph Griffith, Esq., high
sheriff of Flintshire, which sets forth that the petitioner had been at great

expense by sending clerks and agents to Liverpool and Shrewsbury to hire
an executioner. The man to be hanged belonged to Wales, and no Welshman
would do the job. Travelling expenses of these agents cost £15, and another
£10 were spent in the hire of a Shropshire man, who deserted, and was
pursued, but without success. Another man was hired, himself a convict,
whose fees for self and wife were twelve guineas. Then came the cost of the
gallows, £4 12s.; and finally the funeral, cart, coffin, and other petty
expenses, amounting to £7 10s., making the whole outlay close on £50.

CHAPTER VII.

NEWGATE NOTORIETIES.
Diminution in certain kinds of crime—Fewer street robberies because people carried less cash about
them—Corresponding increase in cases of fraud, forgeries, jewel and bullion robberies—Great
commercial frauds—Offences against the person confined to murder and manslaughter, the
character of which remained much the same—Another crime, that of attempt upon the sovereign—
Other forms of treason—The Cato Street conspiracy—Thistlewood’s history—Discovery of the
plot—The conspirators’ plan—How defeated—Their trial at the Old Bailey—The informer
Edwards—Their sentence and execution—Attacks on the sovereign—Oxford fires at Queen
Victoria—His attempt due to a craze for notoriety—“Young England”—Francis—Bean—Mr. Pate
—Celebrated frauds and forgeries—Fauntleroy—The last execution for forgery—Captain
Montgomery—Joseph Hunton the Quaker—Richard Gifford—Maynard—Sir Robert Peel’s bill to
amend forgery laws—The Forgery Act—Latest cases of abduction—E. Gibbon Wakefield and
Miss Turner—Big “jobs,” burglaries and other robberies, still perpetrated—Howard robs Mr.
Mullay—Strange assault upon Mr. Gee—Thieves prosper through connivance of fences and
receivers—Ikey Solomons—His escape from custody—He leaves the country, but returns, and is
eventually sentenced to transportation—Large robbery of the Custom House—While still
undiscovered, robbery of diamonds at the Custom House Quay—Leads to detection of both—The
gold-dust robbery in 1839—How discovered—Done by Jews, who cheat each other all round—A
few of the most remarkable murders of this epoch—Thurtell, Hunt, and Probert kill Mr. Weare—
Burke and Hall—Their imitators, Bishop and Williams, in London, murder an Italian boy and sell
the body—Greenacre and Mrs. Gale murder Hannah Brown—Horrible means of disposing of the
corpse—Detection, trial, and sentence.

IN chapter two of the present volume I brought down the record of crime to
the second decade of the present century. I propose now to continue the
subject, and to devote a couple of chapters to criminal occurrences of a
more recent date, only premising that as accounts become more voluminous
I shall be compelled to deal with fewer cases, taking in preference those
which are typical and invested with peculiar interest. It is somewhat
remarkable that a marked change soon comes over the Calendar. Certain
crimes, those against the person especially, diminished gradually. They
became less easy or remunerative. Police protection was better and more
effective; the streets of London were well lighted, the suburbs were more
populous and regularly patrolled. People, too, were getting into the habit of
carrying but little cash about them, and no valuables but their watches or
personal jewellery. Street robberies offered fewer inducements to
depredators, and evil-doers were compelled to adopt other methods of
preying upon their fellows. This led to a rapid and marked increase in all

kinds of fraud; and prominent in the criminal annals of Newgate in these
later years will be found numerous remarkable instances of this class of
offence—forgeries committed systematically, and for long periods, as in the
case of Fauntleroy, to cover enormous defalcations; the fabrication of
deeds, wills, and false securities for the purpose of misappropriating funds
or feloniously obtaining cash; thefts of bullion, bank-notes, specie, and
gold-dust, planned with consummate ingenuity, eluding the keenest
vigilance, and carried out with reckless daring; jewel-boxes cleverly stolen
under the very noses of owners or care-takers. As time passed, the
extraordinary extension of all commercial operations led to many entirely
novel and often gigantic financial frauds. The credulity of investors, the
unscrupulous dishonesty of bankers, the slackness of supervision over
wholly irresponsible agents, produced many terrible monetary catastrophes,
and lodged men like Cole, Robson, and Redpath in Newgate.
While the varying conditions of social life thus brought about many
changes in the character of offences against property, those against the
person became more and more limited to the most heinous, or those which
menaced or destroyed life. There was no increase in murder or
manslaughter; the number of such crimes remained pretty constant
proportionately to population. Nor did the methods by which they were
perpetrated greatly vary from those in times past. The causes also continued
much the same. Passion, revenge, cupidity, sudden ebullitions of homicidal
rage, the cold-blooded, calculating atrocity born of self-interest, were still
the irresistible incentives to kill. The brutal ferocity of the wild beast once
aroused, the same means, the same weapons were employed to do the
dreadful deed, the same and happily often futile precautions taken to
conceal the crime. Pegsworth, and Greenacre, and Daniel Good merely
reproduced types that had gone before, and that have since reappeared.
Esther Hibner was as inhuman in her ill-usage of the parish apprentice she
killed as Martha Brownrigg had been. Thurtell and Hunt followed in the
footsteps of Billings, Wood, and Catherine Hayes. Courvoisier might have
lived a century earlier. Hocker was found upon the scene of his crime,
irresistibly attracted thither, as was Theodore Gardelle. Now and again there
seemed to be a recurrence of a murder epidemic, as there had been before;
as in the year 1849, a year memorable for the Rush murders at Norwich, the
Gleeson Wilson murder at Liverpool, that of the Mannings in London, and
of many more. Men like Mobbs, the miscreant known as “General Haynau”

on account of his blood-thirstiness, still murdered their wives; or like
Cannon the chimney-sweeper, who savagely killed the policeman.
A not altogether new crime, however, akin to murder, although happily
never passing beyond dastardly attempts, cropped up in these times, and
was often frequently repeated within a short interval. The present Queen
very soon after her accession became the victim of the most cowardly and
unmanly outrages, and the attempted murder of the sovereign by Oxford in
1840 was followed in the very next year by those of Francis and of Bean in
two consecutive months, while in 1850 Her Majesty was the victim of
another outrage at the hands of one Pate. These crimes had their origin too
often in the disordered brains of lunatics at large, like Captain Goode. Their
perpetrators were charged with high treason, but met with merciful
clemency as irresponsible beings. But at various dates treason more distinct
and tangible came to the front: attempts to levy war against the State. The
well-known Cato Street conspiracy, which grew out of disturbed social
conditions after the last French war, amidst general distress, and when the
people were beginning to agitate for a larger share of political power, was
among the earliest, and to some extent the most desperate, of these. Its
ringleaders, Thistlewood and the rest, were after capture honoured by
committal as State prisoners to the Tower, but they came one and all to
Newgate for trial at the Old Bailey, and remained there after conviction till
they were hanged. Later on, the Chartists agitated persistently for the
concession embraced in the so-called People’s Charter, many of which are
by this time actually, and by more legitimate efforts, engrafted upon our
Constitution. But the Chartists sought their ends by riot and rebellion, and
gained only imprisonment for their pains. Some five hundred in all were
arrested, but as only three of these were lodged in Newgate, I shall not recur
to them in my narrative.
The Cato Street conspiracy would have been simply ridiculous but for
the recklessness of the desperadoes who planned it. That some thirty or
more needy men should hope to revolutionize England is a sufficient proof
of the absurdity of their attempt. But they proceeded in all seriousness, and
would have shrunk from no outrage or atrocity in furtherance of their
foolhardy enterprise. The massacre of the whole of the Cabinet Ministers at
one stroke was to be followed by an attack upon “the old man and the old
woman,” as they styled the Mansion House and the Bank of England. At the
former the “Provisional Government” was to be established, which under

Thistlewood as dictator was to rule the nation, by first handing over its
capital to fire and pillage. This Thistlewood had seen many vicissitudes
throughout his strange, adventurous career. The son of a respectable
Lincolnshire farmer, he became a militia officer, and married a woman with
£10,000, in which, however, she had only a life interest. She died early, and
Thistlewood, left to his own resources, followed the profession of arms,
first in the British service, and then in that of the French revolutionary
Government. It was during this period that he was said to have imbibed his
revolutionary ideas. Returning to England, he found himself rich in a small
landed property, which he presently sold to a man who became bankrupt
before he had paid over the purchase money. After this he tried farming, but
failed. He married again and came to London, where he soon became
notorious as a reckless gambler and a politician holding the most extreme
views. In this way he formed the acquaintance of Watson and others, with
whom he was arraigned for treasonable practices, and imprisoned. On his
release he sent a challenge to Lord Sidmouth, the Home Secretary, and was
again arrested and imprisoned. On his second release, goaded by his fancied
wrongs, he began to plot a dark and dreadful revenge, and thus the
conspiracy in which he was the prime mover took shape, and came to a
head.
The Government obtained early and full information of the nefarious
scheme. One of the conspirators, by name Edwards, made a voluntary
confession to Sir Herbert Taylor one morning at Windsor; after which
Thistlewood and his accomplices were closely watched, and measures taken
to arrest them when their plans were so far developed that no doubt could
remain as to their guilt. The day appointed for the murder and rising
actually arrived before the authorities interfered. It was the day on which
Lord Harrowby was to entertain his colleagues at dinner in Grosvenor
Square. The occasion was considered excellent by the conspirators for
disposal of the whole Cabinet at one blow, and it was arranged that one of
their number should knock at Lord Harrowby’s door on the pretence of
leaving a parcel, and that when it was opened the whole band should rush
in. While a few secured the servants, the rest were to fall upon Lord
Harrowby and his guests. Hand-grenades were to be thrown into the dining-
room, and during the noise and confusion the assassination of the ministers
was to be completed, the heads of Lord Castlereagh and Lord

The Stable &c. in Cato Street where the Conspirators met.

Sidmouth being carried away in a bag. Lord Harrowby’s dinner-party
was postponed, but the conspirators knew nothing of it, and those who
watched his house were further encouraged in their mistake by the arrival of
many carriages, bound, as it happened, to the Archbishop of York’s.
Meanwhile the main body remained at their headquarters, a ruined stable in
Cato Street, Edgeware Road, completing their dispositions for assuming
supreme power after the blow had been struck. Here they were surprised by
the police, headed by a magistrate, and supported by a strong detachment of
Her Majesty’s Guards. The police were the first to arrive on the spot, the
Guards having entered the street at the wrong end. The conspirators were in
a loft, approached by a ladder and a trap-door, access through which could
only be obtained one by one. The first constable who entered Thistlewood
ran through the body with a sword, but others quickly followed, the lights
were extinguished, and a desperate conflict ensued. The Guards, headed by
Lord Adolphus Fitz Clarence, now reinforced the police, and the
conspirators gave way. Nine of the latter were captured, with all the war
material, cutlasses, pistols, hand-grenades, and ammunition. Thistlewood
and fourteen more succeeded for the moment in making their escape, but
most of them were subsequently taken. Thistlewood was discovered next
morning in a mean house in White Street, Moorfields. He was in bed with
his breeches on (in the pockets of which were found a number of
cartridges), the black belt he had worn at Cato Street, and a military sash.

The trial of the conspirators came on some six weeks later, at the Old
Bailey. Thistlewood made a long and rambling defence, the chief features
of which were abuse of Lord Sidmouth, and the vilification of the informer
Edwards. Several of the other prisoners took the same line as regards
Edwards, and there seems to have been good reason for supposing that he
was a greater villain than any of those arraigned. He had been in a state of
abject misery, and when he first joined “the reformers,” as the Cato Street
conspirators called themselves, he had neither a bed to lie upon nor a coat to
his back. His sudden access to means unlimited was no doubt due to the
profitable rôle he soon adopted of Government informer and spy, and it is
pretty certain that for some time he served both sides; on the one inveigling
silly enthusiasts to join in the plot, and denouncing them on the other. The
employment of Edwards, and the manner in which the conspirators were
allowed to commit themselves further and further before the law was set in
motion against them, were not altogether creditable to the Government. It
was asserted, not without foundation, at these trials, that Edwards
repeatedly incited the associates he was betraying to commit outrage, to set
fire to houses, throw hand-grenades into the carriages of ministers; that he
was, to use Thistlewood’s words, “a contriver, instigator, and entrapper.”
The Government were probably not proud of their agent, for Edwards, after
the conviction had been assured, went abroad to enjoy, it was said, an ample
pension, so long as he did not return to England.
Five of the conspirators, Thistlewood, Ings, Brunt, Davidson, and Tidd,
were sentenced to death, and suffered in the usual way in front of Newgate,
with the additional penalty of decapitation, as traitors, after they had been
hanged. A crowd as great as any known collected in the Old Bailey to see
the ceremony, about which there were some peculiar features worth
recording. The reckless demeanour of all the convicts except Davidson was
most marked. Thistlewood and Ings sucked oranges on the scaffold; they
with Brunt and Tidd scorned the ordinary’s ministrations, but Ings said he
hoped God would be more merciful to him than men had been. Ings was
especially defiant. He sought to cheer Davidson, who seemed affected,
crying out, “Come, old cock-of-wax, it will soon be over.” As the
executioner fastened the noose, he nodded to a friend he saw in the crowd;
and catching sight of the coffins ranged around the gallows, he smiled at the
show with contemptuous indifference. He roared out snatches of a song
about Death or Liberty, and just before he was turned off, yelled out three

cheers to the populace whom he faced. He told the executioner to “do it
tidy,” to pull it tight, and was in a state of hysterical exaltation up to the
very last. Davidson, who was the only one who seemed to realize his awful
situation, listened patiently and with thankfulness to the chaplain, and died
in a manner strongly contrasting with that of his fellows. After the five
bodies had hung for half-an-hour, a man in a mask came forward to
complete the sentence. Contemporary reports state that from the skilful
manner in which he performed the decapitation, he was generally supposed
to be a surgeon. Be this as it may, the weapon used was only an ordinary
axe, which rather indicates that force, not skill, was employed. This axe is
still in existence, and is preserved at Newgate with various other unpleasant
curiosities, but is only an ordinary commonplace tool. These were the last
executions for high treason, but not the last prisoners by many who passed
through Newgate charged with sedition.
Attacks upon the sovereign, as I have said, became more common after
the accession of the young Queen Victoria in 1838. It was a form of high
treason not unknown in earlier reigns. In 1786 a mad woman, Margaret
Nicholson, tried to stab George III. as he was alighting from his carriage at
the gate of St. James’s Palace. She was seized before she could do any
mischief, and eventually lodged in Bethlehem Hospital, where she died
after forty years’ detention, at the advanced age of one hundred. Again, a
soldier, by name Hatfield, who had been wounded in the head, and
discharged from the army for unsoundness of mind, fired a pistol at George
III. from the pit of Drury Lane theatre in 1800. William IV. was also the
victim of a murderous outrage on Ascot race-course in 1832, when John
Collins, “a person in the garb of a sailor, of wretched appearance, and
having a wooden leg,” threw a stone at the king, which hit him on the
forehead, but did no serious injury. Collins, when charged, pleaded that he
had lost his leg in action, that he had petitioned without success for a
pension, and that, as he was starving, he had resolved on this desperate
deed, feeling, as he said, that he might as well be shot or hanged as remain
in such a state. He was eventually sentenced to death, but the plea of lunacy
was allowed, and he was confined for life.
None of the foregoing attempts were, however, so dastardly or
determined as that made by Oxford upon our present gracious Queen two
years after she ascended the throne. The cowardly crime was probably
encouraged by the fearless and confiding manner in which the Queen,

secure as it seemed in the affections of her loyal people, freely appeared in
public. Oxford, who was only nineteen at the time his offence was
committed, had been born at Birmingham, but he came as a lad to London,
and took service as a pot-boy to a publican. From this he was promoted to
barman, and as such had charge of the business in various public-houses.
He left his last situation in April 1840, and established himself in lodgings
in Lambeth, after which he devoted himself to pistol practice in shooting-
galleries, sometimes in Leicester Square, sometimes in the Strand, or the
West End. His acquaintances often asked his object in this, but he kept his
own counsel till the 10th June. On that day Oxford was on the watch at
Buckingham Palace. He saw Prince Albert return there from a visit to
Woolwich, and then passed on to Constitution Hill, where he waited till four
p.m., the time at which the Queen and Prince Consort usually took an
afternoon drive. About six p.m. the royal carriage, a low open vehicle
drawn by four horses, ridden by postilions, left the palace. Oxford, who had
been pacing backwards and forwards with his hands under the lapels of his
coat, saw the carriage approach. He was on the right or north side of the
road. Prince Albert occupied the same side of the carriage, the Queen the
left. As the carriage came up to him Oxford turned, put his hand into his
breast, drew a pistol, and fired at the Queen.
The shot missed, and as the carriage passed on, Oxford drew a second
pistol and fired again. The Queen saw this second movement, and stooped
to avoid the shot; the Prince too rose to shield her with his person. Again,
providentially, the bullet went wide of the mark, and the royal party drove
back to Clarence House, the Queen being anxious to give the first news of
the outrage and of her safety to her mother, the Duchess of Kent.
Meanwhile the pistol-shots had attracted the attention of the bystanders, of
whom there was a fair collection, as usual, waiting to see the Queen pass.
Oxford was seized by a person named Lowe, who was at first mistaken for
the assailant. But Oxford at once assumed the responsibility for his crime,
saying, “It was I. I did it. I’ll give myself up. There is no occasion to use
violence. I will go with you.” He was taken into custody, and removed first
to a police cell, thence committed to Newgate, after he had been examined
before the Privy Council. Oxford expressed little anxiety or concern. He
asked more than once whether the Queen was hurt, and acknowledged that
the pistols were loaded with ball.

A craze for notoriety, to be achieved at any cost, was the one absorbing
idea in young Oxford’s disordered brain. After his arrest he thought only of
the excitement his attempt had raised, nothing of its atrocity, or of the fatal
consequences which might have ensued. When brought to trial he hardly
realized his position, but gazed with complacency around the crowded
court, and eagerly inquired what persons of distinction were present. He
smiled continually, and when the indictment was read, burst into loud and
discordant fits of laughter. These antics may have been assumed to bear out
the plea of insanity set up in his defence, but that there was madness in his
family, and that he himself was of unsound mind, could not be well denied.
His father, it was proved in evidence, had been at times quite mad; and
Oxford’s mental state might be inferred from his own proceedings. Among
his papers was found a curious document, purporting to be the rules of an
association called “Young England,” which Oxford had evolved out of his
own inflated self-conceit, and which had never any real corporeal existence.
“Young England” was a secret society, with no aim or object. Its sworn
members, known only to Oxford, and all of them mere shadows, were
bound to provide themselves with sword, rifle, dagger, and a pair of pistols;
to wear a black crape mask, to obey punctually the orders of their
commander-in-chief, and to assume any disguise, if required to go into the
country on the business of the association.
The officers of the society were to be known only by “factitious (sic)
names.” Thus, among the presidents were those of Gowrie, Justinian,
Aloman, Colsman, Kenneth, and Godfrey; Hannibal and Ethelred were on
the council; Anthony, Augustus, and Frederic were among the generals;
Louis and Amadeus among the captains; and Hercules, Neptune, and Mars
among the lieutenants of the association. The various grades were
distinguished by cockades and bows of different colours. The society was
supposed to meet regularly, and its proceedings, together with the speeches
made, were duly recorded. With Oxford’s other papers were found letters
from the secretary, written as it seemed by Oxford to himself, after the
manner of Mr. Toots, all of which declared their approval of the
commander-in-chief. One expressed pleasure that Oxford improved so
much in speaking, and declared that his (Oxford’s) speech the last time
“was beautiful.” This letter went on to say that a new member had been
introduced by Lieut. Mars, “a fine, tall, gentlemanly young man, and it is
said that he is a military officer, but his name has not yet transpired. Soon

after he was introduced we were alarmed by a violent knocking at the door;
in an instant our faces were covered, we cocked our pistols, and with drawn
swords stood waiting to receive the enemy. While one stood over the fire
with the papers, another stood with lighted torch to fire the house. We then
sent the old woman to open the door, and it proved to be some little boys
who had knocked and ran away.” Another letter directed Oxford to attend
an extraordinary meeting of “Young England” in consequence of having
received some information of an important nature from Hanover. “You must
attend; and if your master will not give you leave, you must come in
defiance of him.”
No serious importance could be attached to these, the manifest
inventions of a disordered intellect. The whole of the evidence pointed so
strongly towards insanity, that the jury brought in a verdict of acquittal on
that ground, and Oxford was ordered to be detained during Her Majesty’s
pleasure. He went from Newgate first to Bethlehem, from which he was
removed to Broadmoor on the opening of the great criminal lunatic asylum
at that place. He was released from Broadmoor in 1878, and went abroad.
Within a couple of years a second attempt to assassinate the Queen was
perpetrated in nearly the same spot, by a man named John Francis, who was
arrested in the very act, just as he had fired one shot. His motives for thus
imitating the dastardly crime of Oxford are shrouded in obscurity. He could
not plead insanity like his predecessor, and no attempt was made at his trial
to prove him of unsound mind. Here again probably it was partly the love of
notoriety which was the incentive, backed possibly with the hope that, as in
a much more recent case,[105] he would be in some way provided for, he
having been for some time previously in abject circumstances. The deed
was long premeditated, and would have been executed a day earlier had not
his courage failed him at the last moment. A youth named Pearson had seen
him present a pistol at the Queen’s carriage, but draw it back again,
exclaiming presently, “I wish I had done it.” Pearson weakly allowed
Francis to go off without securing his apprehension, but later he gave full
information. The Queen was apprised of the danger, and begged not to go
abroad; but she declared she would not remain a prisoner in her own palace,
and next day drove out as usual in an open barouche. Nothing happened till
Her Majesty returned to Buckingham Palace about six p.m., when, on
descending Constitution Hill, with an equerry riding close on each side of
her carriage, a man who had been leaning against the palace garden wall

suddenly advanced, levelled a pistol at the Queen, and fired. He was so
close to the carriage that the smoke of his pistol enveloped the face of
Colonel Wylde, one of the equerries. The Queen was untouched, and at
first, it is said, hardly realized the danger she had escaped. Francis had
already been seized by a policeman named Trounce, who saw his
movement with the pistol, but too late to prevent its discharge. The prisoner
was conveyed without delay to the Home Office, and there examined by the
Privy Council, which had been hastily summoned for the purpose. On
searching him the pistol was found in his pocket, the barrel still warm; also
some loose powder and a bullet. There was some doubt as to whether the
pistol when fired was actually loaded with ball, but the jury brought in a
verdict of guilty of the criminal intent to kill. Francis was sentenced to be
hanged, decapitated, and quartered, the old traitor’s doom, but was spared,
and subsequently transported for life. The enthusiasm of the people at the
Queen’s escape was uproarious, and her drive next day was one long
triumphal progress. At the Italian Opera in the evening the audience, on the
Queen’s appearance, greeted her with loud cheers, and called for the
national anthem. This was in May 1842.
Undeterred by the well-merited punishment which had overtaken
Francis, a third miscreant made a similar but far less serious attempt in the
month of July following. As the Queen was driving from Buckingham
Palace to the Chapel Royal, a deformed lad among the crowd was seen to
present a pistol at Her Majesty’s carriage, in the Mall, about half-way
between Buckingham and St. James’s Palaces. Only one person saw the
movement, a lad named Dasset, who at once collared the cripple, and taking
him up to two policemen, charged him with the offence. The policemen
treated the matter as a hoax, and allowed the culprit to make off. Later on,
however, Dasset was himself seized and interrogated, and on his
information handbills were circulated, giving the exact description of the
deformed youth, who had “a hump-back, and a long, sickly, pale face, with
light hair;” his nose was marked with a scar or black patch, and he was
altogether of a dirty appearance. It happened that a lad named Bean had
absconded from his father’s home some weeks before, whose description,
as given by his father to the police, exactly tallied with that of the deformed
person “wanted” for the assault on the Queen. A visit to the father’s
residence was followed by the arrest of the son, who had by this time
returned. This son, John William Bean, was fully identified by Dasset, and

presently examined by the Privy Council. He was eventually charged with a
misdemeanour, the capital charge having been abandoned, and committed
for trial. Much the same motives of seeking notoriety seem to have impelled
Bean, who was perfectly sane, to his rash act; but it was proved that the
pistol was not loaded with ball, and he was only convicted of an attempt “to
harass, vex, and grieve the sovereign.” Lord Abinger sentenced him to
eighteen months’ imprisonment in Newgate, but the place of durance was
changed, to meet the existing law, to Millbank Penitentiary.
I shall mention briefly one more case, in which, however, there was no
murderous intent, before I pass on to other crimes. On June 1850 the Queen
was once more subjected to cowardly outrage, the offender being a Mr.
Pate, a gentleman by birth, who had borne the Queen’s commission, first as
cornet, and then lieutenant, in the 10th Hussars. Pate was said to be an
eccentric person, given to strange acts and antics, such as mixing whiskey
and camphor with his morning bath-water, and walking for choice through
prickly gorse bushes. He always kept the blinds down at his chambers in
Jermyn Street; and as the St. James’s clock chimed quarter-past three,
invariably went out in a cab, for which he always paid the same fare, nine
shillings, all in shillings, and no other coin. But this was not sufficient to
constitute lunacy, nor was his plea of “momentary uncontrollable impulse”
deemed valid as any palliation of his offence. That offence was a brutal
assault upon Her Majesty, whom he struck in the face with a small stick just
as she was leaving Cambridge House. The blow crushed the bonnet and
bruised the forehead of the Queen, who was happily not otherwise injured.
Pate was found guilty, and sentenced to seven years’ transportation, the
judge, Baron Alderson, abstaining from inflicting the penalty of whipping,
which was authorized by a recent act, on account of Mr. Pate’s family and
position in life.
I have already remarked that as violence was more and more eliminated
from crimes against the person, frauds indicating great boldness, extensive
design, and ingenuity became more prevalent. The increase of bank
forgeries, and its cause, I referred to in a previous chapter.[106] At one
session of the Old Bailey, in 1821, no less than thirty-five true bills were
found for passing forged notes. But there were other notorious cases of
forgery. That of Fauntleroy the banker, in 1824, caused much excitement at
the time on account of the magnitude of the fraud, and the seeming probity
of the culprit. Mr. Fauntleroy was a member of a banking firm, which his

father had established in conjunction with a gentleman of the name of
Marsh, and others. He had entered the house as clerk in 1800; in 1807, and
when only twenty-two, he succeeded to his father’s share in the business.
According to Fauntleroy’s own case, he found at once that the firm was
heavily involved, through advances made to various builders, and that it
could only maintain its credit by wholesale discounting. Its embarrassments
were greatly increased by the bankruptcy of two of its clients in the building
trade, and the bank became liable for a sum of £170,000. New liabilities
were incurred to the extent of £100,000 by more failures, and in 1819, by
the death of one of the partners, a large sum in cash had to be withdrawn
from the bank to pay his heirs. “During these numerous and trying
difficulties”—it is Mr. Fauntleroy who speaks—“the house was nearly
without resources, and the whole burthen of management falling on me, ... I
sought resources where I could;” in other words, he forged powers of
attorney, and proceeded to realize securities lodged in his bank under
various names. Among the prisoner’s private papers, one was found giving
full details of the stock he had feloniously sold out, the sum total amounting
to some £170,000, with a declaration in his own handwriting to the
following effect. “In order to keep up the credit of our house, I have forged
powers of attorney for the above sums and parties, and sold out to the
amount here stated, and without the knowledge of my partners. I kept up the
payments of the dividends, but made no entries of such payments in my
books. The bank began first to refuse our acceptances, and to destroy the
credit of our house; the bank shall smart for it.”
Many stories were in circulation at the time of Fauntleroy’s trial with
regard to his forgeries. It was said that he had by means of them sold out so
large an amount of stock, that he paid £16,000 a year in dividends to escape
detection. Once he ran a narrow risk of being found out. A lady in the
country, who had £13,000 in the stocks, desired her London agent to sell
them out. He went to the bank, and found that no stocks stood in her name.
He called at once upon Fauntleroy, his client’s bankers, for an explanation,
and was told by Mr. Fauntleroy that the lady had desired him to sell out,
“which I have done,” added the fraudulent banker, “and here are the
proceeds,” whereupon he produced exchequer bills to the amount. Nothing
more was heard of the affair, although the lady declared that she had never
instructed Fauntleroy to sell. On another occasion the banker forged a
gentleman’s name while the latter was sitting with him in his private room,

and took the instrument out to a clerk with the ink not dry. It must be added
that the Bank of England, on discovering the forgeries, replaced the stock in
the names of the original holders, who might otherwise have been
completely ruined. A newspaper report of the time describes Fauntleroy as
“a well-made man of middle stature. His hair, though gray, was thick, and
lay smooth over his forehead. His countenance had an expression of most
subdued resignation. The impression which his appearance altogether was
calculated to make was that of the profoundest commiseration.”
The crime, long carried on without detection, was first discovered in
1820, when it was found that a sum of £10,000, standing in the name of
three trustees, of whom Fauntleroy was one, had been sold out under a
forged power of attorney. Further investigations brought other similar
frauds to light, and fixed the whole sum misappropriated at £170,000, the
first forgery dating back to 1814. A run upon the bank immediately
followed, which was only met by a suspension of payment and the closing
of its doors. Meanwhile public gossip was busy with Fauntleroy’s name,
and it was openly stated in the press and in conversation that the proceeds
of these frauds had been squandered in chambering, gambling, and
debauchery. Fauntleroy was scouted as a

Fauntleroy in the Dock.

licentious libertine, a deep and determined gamester, a spendthrift whose
extravagance knew no bounds.[107] The veil was lifted from his private life,
and he was accused of persistent immorality. In his defence he sought to
rebut these charges, which indeed were never clearly made out, and it is
pretty certain that his own account of the causes which led him into

dishonesty was substantially true. He called many witnesses, seventeen in
all, to speak of him as they had found him; and these, all respectable city
merchants and business men, declared that they had hitherto formed a high
opinion of his honour, integrity, and goodness of disposition, deeming him
the last person capable of a dishonourable action.
These arguments availed little with the jury, who after a short
deliberation found Fauntleroy guilty, and he was sentenced to death. Every
endeavour was used, however, to obtain a commutation of sentence. His
case was twice argued before the judges on points of law, but the result in
both cases was unfavourable. Appeals were made to the Home Secretary,
and all possible political interest brought to bear, but without success.
Fauntleroy meanwhile lay in Newgate, not herded with other condemned
prisoners, as the custom was,[108] but in a separate chamber, that belonging
to one of the warders of the gaol. I find in the chaplain’s journal, under date
1824, various entries relative to this prisoner. “Visited Mr. Fauntleroy. My
application for books for him not having been attended, I had no prayer-
book to give him.” “Visited Mr. Fauntleroy. The sheriffs have very kindly
permitted him to remain in the turnkey’s room where he was originally
placed; nor can I omit expressing a hope that this may prove the beginning
of a better system of confinement, and that every description of persons
who may be unfortunately under sentence of death will no longer be herded
indiscriminately together.”[109] The kindliness of the city authorities to
Fauntleroy was not limited to the assignment of a separate place of durance.
As I have already said, they took the chaplain seriously to task for the
bad taste shown in the condemned sermon preached before Fauntleroy. This
was on the text, “Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest
he fall,” and was full of the most pointed allusions to the culprit. Fauntleroy
constantly groaned aloud while the sermon proceeded, and contemporary
reports declared that “he appeared to feel deeply the force of the reverend
gentleman’s observations,” especially when the chaplain spoke “of the great
magnitude of our erring brother’s offence, one of the most dangerous
description in a trading community.” The sermon ended with an appeal to
the dying man, exhorting him to penitence. This “personality,” and it can be
called by no other name, is carefully excluded from prison pulpit utterances
on the eve of an execution.
A very curious and, in its way, amusing circumstance in connection with
this case was the offer of a certain Italian, Edmund Angelini, to take

Fauntleroy’s place. Angelini wrote to the Lord Mayor to this effect, urging
that Fauntleroy was a father, a citizen: “his life is useful, mine a burthen, to
the State.” He was summoned to the Mansion House, where he repeated his
request, crying, “Accordez moi cette grâce,” with much urgency. There
were doubts of his sanity. He wrote afterwards to the effect that the moment
he had offered himself, an unknown assassin came to aim a blow at him.
“Let this monster give his name; I am ready to fight him. I am still
determined to put myself in the place of Mr. Fauntleroy. If the law of this
country can receive such a sacrifice, my death will render to heaven an
innocent man, and to earth a repentant sinner.”
Fauntleroy was not entirely dependent upon the ordinary for ghostly
counsel in his extremity. He was also attended by the Rev. Mr. Springett and
the indefatigable Mr. Baker, whose name has already been mentioned.[110]
When led out on the morning of his execution, these two last-named
gentlemen each took hold of one of his arms, and so accompanied him to
the scaffold. The concourse in front of Newgate was enormous, but much
sympathy was evinced for this unfortunate victim to human weakness and
ruthless laws. A report was, moreover, widely circulated, and the impression
long prevailed, that he actually escaped death. It was said that strangulation
had been prevented by the insertion of a silver tube in his wind-pipe, and
that after hanging for the regulated time he was taken down and easily
restored to consciousness. Afterwards, according to the common rumour, he
went abroad and lived there for many years; but the story is not only wholly
unsubstantiated, but there is good evidence to show that the body after
execution was handed over to his friends and interred privately.
Some years were still to elapse before capital punishment ceased to be
the penalty for forgery, and in the interval several persons were sentenced to
or suffered death for this crime. There were two notable capital convictions
for forgery in 1828. One was that of Captain Montgomery, who assumed
the aliases of Colonel Wallace and Colonel Morgan. His offence was
uttering forged notes, and there was strong suspicion that he had long
subsisted entirely by this fraud. The act for which he was taken into custody
was the payment of a forged ten-pound note for half-a-dozen silver spoons.
Montgomery was an adept at forgery. He had gone wrong early. Although
born of respectable parents, and gazetted to a commission in the army, he
soon left the service and betook himself to dishonest ways. His first forgery
was the marvellous imitation of the signature of the Hon. Mr. Neville, M.P.,

who wrote an extremely cramped and curious hand. He was not prosecuted
for this fraud on account of the respectability of his family, and soon after
this escape he came to London, where he practised as a professional
swindler and cheat. For a long time justice did not overtake him for any
criminal offence, but he was frequently in Newgate and in the King’s Bench
for debt. After three years’ confinement in the latter prison he passed
himself off as his brother, Colonel Montgomery, a distinguished officer, and
would have married an heiress had not the imposture been discovered in
time. He then took to forging bank-notes, and was arrested as I have
described above. Montgomery was duly sentenced to death, but he
preferred suicide to the gallows. After sentence his demeanour was serious
yet firm. The night previous to that fixed for his execution he wrote several
letters, one of them being to Edward Gibbon Wakefield, a fellow-prisoner,
[111] and listened attentively to the ordinary, who read him the well-known
address written and delivered by Dr. Dodd previous to his own execution
for forgery. But next morning he was found dead in his cell. In one corner
after much search a phial was found labelled “Prussic acid,” which it was
asserted he had been in the habit of carrying about his person ever since he
had taken to passing forged notes, as an “antidote against disgrace.” This
phial he had managed to retain in his possession in spite of the frequent
searches to which he was subjected in Newgate.
The second conviction for forgery in 1828 was that of the Quaker Joseph
Hunton, a man of previously the highest repute in the city of London. He
had prospered in early life, was a slop-seller on a large scale at Bury St.
Edmunds, and a sugar-baker in the metropolis. He married a lady also
belonging to the Society of Friends, who brought him a large fortune,
which, and his own money, he put into a city firm, that of Dickson and Co.
He soon, however, became deeply involved in Stock Exchange
speculations, and losing heavily, to meet the claims upon him he put out a
number of forged bills of exchange or acceptances, to which the signature
of one Wilkins of Abingdon was found to be forged. Hunton tried to fly the
country on the detection of the fraud, but was arrested at Plymouth just as
he was on the point of leaving England in the New York packet. He had
gone on board in his Quaker dress, but when captured was found in a light-
green frock, a pair of light-grey pantaloons, a black stock and a foraging
cap. Hunton was put upon his trial at the Old Bailey, and in due course
sentenced to death. His defence was that the forged acceptances would have

been met on coming to maturity, and that he had no real desire to defraud.
Hunton accepted his sentence with great resignation, although he protested
against the inhumanity of the laws which condemned him to death. On
entering Newgate he said, “I wish after this day to have communication
with nobody; let me take leave of my wife, and family, and friends. I have
already suffered an execution; my heart has undergone that horrible
penalty.” He was, however, visited by and received his wife, and several
members of the Society of Friends. Two elders of the meeting sat up with
him in the press yard the whole of the night previous to execution, and a
third, Mr. Sparks Moline, came to attend him to the scaffold. He met his
death with unshaken firmness, only entreating that a certain blue
handkerchief, to which he seemed fondly attached, should be used to
bandage his eyes, which request was readily granted.
Hunton’s execution no doubt aroused public attention to the cruelty and
futility of the capital law against forgery. A society which had already been
started against capital punishment devoted its efforts first to a mitigation of
the forgery statute, but could not immediately accomplish much. In 1829
the gallows claimed two more victims for this offence. One was Richard
Gifford, a well-educated youth who had been at Christ’s Hospital, and
afterwards in the National Debt Office. Unfortunately he took to drink, lost
his appointment, and fell from bad to worse. Suddenly, after being at the
lowest depths, he emerged, and was found by his friends living in comfort
in the Waterloo Road. His funds, which he pretended came to him with a
rich wife, were really the proceeds of frauds upon the Bank of England. He
forged the names of people who held stock on the Bank books, and got the
value of the stock; he also forged dividend receipts and got the dividends.
He was only six-and-twenty when he was hanged. The other and the last
criminal executed for forgery in this country was one Maynard, who was
convicted of a fraud upon the Custom House. In conjunction with two
others, one of whom was a clerk in the Custom House, and had access to
the official records, he forged a warrant for £1973, and was paid the money
by the comptroller general. Maynard was convicted of uttering the forged
document, Jones of being an accessory; the third prisoner was acquitted.
Maynard was the only one who suffered death.
This was on the last day of 1829. In the following session Sir Robert
Peel brought in a bill to consolidate the acts relating to forgery. Upon the
third reading of this bill Sir James Macintosh moved as an amendment that

capital punishment should be abolished for all crimes of forgery, except the
forgery of wills and powers of attorney. This amendment was strongly
supported outside the House, and a petition in favour of its passing was
presented, signed by more than a thousand members of banking firms.
Macintosh’s amendment was carried in the Commons, but the new law did
not pass the Lords, who re-enacted the capital penalty. Still no sentence of
death was carried out for the offence, and in 1832 the Attorney-General
introduced a bill to abolish capital punishment entirely for forgery. It passed
the Commons, but opposition was again encountered in the Lords. This
time they sent back the bill, re-enacting only the two penalties for will
forging and the forging of powers of attorney; in other words, they had
advanced in 1832 to the point at which the Lower House had arrived in
1830. There were at the moment in Newgate six convicts sentenced to death
for forging wills. The question was whether the Government would dare to
take their lives at the bidding of the House of Lords, and in defiance of the
vote of the assembly which more accurately represented public opinion. It
was indeed announced that their fate was sealed; but Mr. Joseph Hume
pressed the Government hard, and obtained an assurance that the men
should not be executed. The new Forgery Act with the Lords’ amendment
passed into law, but the latter proved perfectly harmless, and no person ever
after suffered death for any variety of this crime.
I will include in this part of the present chapter almost one of the last
instances[112] of a crime which in time past had invariably been visited with
the death penalty, and which was of a distinctly fraudulent nature. The
abduction of Miss Turner by the brothers Wakefield bore a strong
resemblance to the carrying off and forcible marrying of heiresses as
already described.[113] Miss Turner was a school-girl of barely fifteen, only
child of a gentleman of large property in Cheshire, of which county he was
actually high sheriff at the time of his daughter’s abduction. The elder
brother, Edward Gibbon Wakefield, the prime mover in the abduction, was
a barrister, not exactly briefless, but without a large practice. He had, it was
said, a good private income, and was already a widower with two children
at the time of his committing the offence for which he was subsequently
tried. He had eloped with his first wife from school. While on a visit to
Macclesfield he heard by chance of Miss Turner, and that she would inherit
all her father’s possessions. He thereupon conceived an idea of carrying her
off and marrying her willy nilly at Gretna Green. The two brothers started at

once for Liverpool, where Miss Turner was at school with a Mrs. Daulby.
At Manchester, en route, a travelling carriage was purchased, which was
driven up to Mrs. Daulby’s door at eight in the morning, and a servant
hurriedly alighted from it, bearing a letter for Miss Turner. This purported to
be from the medical attendant of Mr. Turner, written at Shrigley, Mr.
Turner’s place of residence; and it stated that Mrs. Turner had been stricken
with paralysis. She was not in immediate danger, but she wished to see her
daughter, “as it was possible she might soon become incapable of
recognizing any one.” Miss Turner, greatly agitated, accompanied the
messenger who had brought this news, a disguised servant of Wakefield’s,
who had plausibly explained that he had only recently been engaged at
Shrigley. The road taken was viâ Manchester, where the servant said a Dr.
Hull was to be picked up to go on with them to Shrigley.
At Manchester, however, the carriage stopped at the Albion Hotel. Miss
Turner was shown into a private room, where Mr. Wakefield soon presented
himself. Miss Turner, not knowing him, would have left the room, but he
said he came from her father, and she remained. Wakefield, in reply to her
inquiries, satisfied her that her mother was well, and that the real reason for
summoning her from school was the state of her father’s affairs. Mr. Turner
was on the verge of bankruptcy. He was at that moment at Kendal, and
wished her to join him there at once. Miss Turner consented to go on, and
they travelled night and day towards the north. But at Kendal there was no
Mr. Turner, and, to allay Miss Turner’s growing anxiety, Wakefield found it
necessary to become more explicit regarding her father’s affairs. He now
pretended that Mr. Turner was also on his way to the border, pursued by
sheriffs’ officers. The fact was, Wakefield went on to say, an uncle of his
had advanced Mr. Turner £60,000, which had temporarily staved off ruin.
But another bank had since failed, and nothing could save Mr. Turner but
the transfer of some property to Miss Turner, and its settlement on her, so
that it might become the exclusive property of her husband, “whoever he
might be.” Wakefield added that it had been suggested he should marry
Miss Turner, but that he had laughed at the idea. Wakefield’s uncle took the
matter more seriously, and declared that unless the marriage came off Mr.
Turner must be sold up. Miss Turner, thus pressed, consented to go on to
Gretna Green. Passing through Carlisle, she was told that Mr. Turner was in
the town, but could not show himself. Nothing could release him from his
trouble but the arrival of the marriage certificate from Gretna Green. Filial

affection rose superior to all scruples, and Miss Turner, having crossed the
border, was married to Wakefield by the blacksmith in the usual way.
Returning to Carlisle, she now heard that her father had been set free, and
had gone home to Shrigley, whither they were to follow him. They set out,
but at Leeds Wakefield found himself called suddenly to Paris; the other
brother was accordingly sent on a pretended mission to Shrigley to bring
Mr. Turner on to London, whither Wakefield and Miss Turner also
proceeded. On arrival, Wakefield pretended that they had missed Mr.
Turner, and must follow him over to France. The strangely-married couple
thereupon pressed on to Dover, and crossed over to Calais.
The fact of the abduction did not transpire for some days. Then Mrs.
Daulby learnt that Miss Turner had not arrived at Shrigley, but that she had
gone to Manchester. Friends went in pursuit and traced her to Huddersfield
and further north. The terror and dismay of her parents were soon
intensified by the receipt of a letter from Wakefield, at Carlisle, announcing
the marriage. Mr. Turner at once set off for London, where he sought the
assistance of the police, and presently ascertained that Wakefield had gone
to the Continent with his involuntary bride. An uncle of Miss Wakefield’s,
accompanied by his solicitor and a Bow Street runner, at once went in
pursuit. Meanwhile, a second letter turned up from Wakefield at Calais, in
which he assured Mrs. Turner that Miss Turner was fondly attached to him,
and went on to say, “I do assure you, madam, that it shall be the anxious
endeavour of my life to promote her happiness by every means in my
power.” The game, however, was nearly up. Miss Turner was met by her
uncle on Calais pier as she was walking with Wakefield. The uncle claimed
her. The husband resisted. M. le Maire was appealed to, and decided to
leave it to the young lady, who at once abandoned Wakefield. As he still
urged his rights over his wife, Miss Turner cried out in protest, “No, no, I
am not his wife; he carried me away by fraud and stratagem, and forced me
to accompany him to Gretna Green.... By the same forcible means I was
compelled to quit England, and to trust myself to the protection of this
person, whom I never saw until I was taken from Liverpool, and never want
to see again.” On this Wakefield gave in. He surrendered the bride who had
never been a wife, and she returned to England with her friends, while
Wakefield went on alone to Paris.
Mr. William Wakefield was arrested at Dover, conveyed to Chester, and
committed to Lancaster Gaol for trial at the next assizes, when indictments

were preferred against both brothers “for having carried away Ellen Turner,
spinster, then a maid and heir apparent unto her father, for the sake of the
lucre of her substance; and for having afterwards unlawfully and against her
will married the said Ellen Turner.” They were tried in March of the
following year, Edward Wakefield having apparently given himself up, and
found guilty, remaining in Lancaster Gaol for a couple of months, when
they were brought up to the court of King’s Bench for judgment. The
prosecution pressed for a severe penalty. Edward Wakefield pleaded that his
trial had already cost him £3000. Mr. Justice Bayley, in summing up, spoke
severely of the gross deception practised upon an innocent girl, and
sentenced the brothers each to three years’ imprisonment, William
Wakefield in Lancaster Gaol, and Edward Gibbon Wakefield in Newgate,
which sentences were duly enforced. The marriage was annulled by an Act
of Parliament, although Wakefield petitioned against it, and was brought
from Newgate, at his own request, to oppose the second reading of the bill.
He also wrote and published a pamphlet from the gaol to show that Miss
Turner had been a consenting party to the marriage, and was really his wife.
Neither his address nor his pamphlet availed much, for the bill for the
divorce passed both Houses. That Mr. Wakefield was a shrewd critic and
close observer of all that went on in the Newgate of those days, will be
admitted by those who have read his book on “the punishment of death,”
which was based on his gaol experiences, and of which I have availed
myself in the last chapter.
After their release from Lancaster and Newgate respectively, both
Wakefields went abroad. Mr. W. Wakefield served in a continental army,
and rose to the rank of colonel, after which he went to New Zealand, and
held an important post in that colony. Mr. E. G. Wakefield took part in the
scheme for the colonization of North Australia, and for some years resided
in that colony. Miss Turner subsequently married Mr. Legh of Lym Hall,
Cheshire.
It must not be imagined that although highway robbery was now nearly
extinct,[114] and felonious outrages in the streets were rare, that thieves or
depredators were idle or entirely unsuccessful. Bigger “jobs” than ever were
planned and attempted, as in the burglary at Lambeth Palace, when the
thieves were fortunately disappointed, the archbishop having, before he left
town, sent his plate-chests, eight in number, to the silversmith’s for greater
security. The jewellers were always a favourite prey of the London thieves.

Shops were broken into, as when that of Grimaldi and Johnson, in the
Strand, was robbed of watches to the value of £6000. Where robbery with
violence was intended, the perpetrators had now to adopt various shifts and
contrivances to secure their victim. No more curious instance of this ever
occurred than the assault made by one Howard upon a Mr. Mullay, with
intent to rob him. The latter had advertised, offering a sum of £1000 to any
one who would introduce him to some mercantile employment. Howard
replied, desiring Mr. Mullay to call upon him in a house in Red Lion
Square. Mr. Mullay went, and a second interview was agreed upon, when a
third person, Mr. Owen, through whose interest an appointment under
Government was to be obtained for Mullay, would be present. Mr. Mullay
called again, taking with him £500 in cash. Howard discovered this, and his
manner was very suspicious; there were weapons in the room—a long
knife, a heavy trap-ball bat, and a poker. Mr. Mullay became alarmed, and
as Mr. Owen did not appear, withdrew; Howard, strange to say, making no
attempt to detain him; probably because Mullay promised to return a few
days later, and to bring more money. On this renewed visit Mr. Owen was
still absent, and Mr. Mullay agreed to write him a note from a copy Howard
gave him. While thus engaged, Howard thrust the poker into the fire.
Mullay protested, and then Howard, under the influence of ungovernable
rage, as it seemed, jumped up, locked the door, and attacked Mullay
violently with the trap-ball bat and knife. Mullay defended himself, and
managed to break the knife, but not before he had cut himself severely. A
life and death struggle ensued. Mullay cried “Murder!” Howard swore he
would finish him, but proved the weaker of the two, and Mullay got him
down on the floor. By this time the neighbours were aroused, and several
people came to the scene of the affray. Howard was secured, given into
custody, and committed to Newgate. The defence he set up was, that Mullay
had used epithets towards him while they were negotiating a business
matter, and that, being an irritable temper, he had struck Mullay, after which
a violent scuffle took place. It was, however, proved that Howard was in
needy circumstances, and that his proposals to Mr. Mullay could only have
originated in a desire to rob him. He was found guilty of an assault with
intent, and sentenced to transportation for fourteen years.
A more complicated and altogether most extraordinary case of assault,
with intent to extort money, occurred a few years later. It was perpetrated
upon a respectable country solicitor, Mr. Gee, of Bishop Stortford, who

administered the estate of a certain Mr. Canning, deceased. This Mr.
Canning had left his widow a life interest in £2000 so long as she remained
unmarried. The money went after her to her children. Mr. Gee had invested
£1200 of this, and was seeking how best to place the remaining £800, when
he was asked to meet a Mr. Heath in London with regard to the sale of
certain lands at Bishop Stortford. An appointment was made and kept by
Mr. Gee, but on arrival he was met by a young sailor with a letter which
begged Mr. Gee to go to Heath’s house, as the latter was not well. Mr. Gee
went in the coach sent for him, and alighted at 27, York Street, West,
Commercial Road. The coach immediately drove off; Mr. Gee entered the
house, asked for Mr. Heath, was told he would find him in the back kitchen
at breakfast. He was about to descend the stairs when three persons, one of
them the young sailor, fell upon him, and in spite of his resistance carried
him into a sort of den partitioned off at the end of the back kitchen. There
he was seated on some sort of wooden bench and securely fastened. “A
chain fixed to staples at his back passed round his chest under his arms, and
was padlocked on the left side;” his feet were bound with cords and made
fast to rings in the floor. Thus manacled, one of the party, who pretended to
be Mrs. Canning’s brother, addressed him, insisting that he should forthwith
sign a cheque for the £800 of the Canning inheritance still uninvested, and
write an order sufficient to secure the surrender of the other £1200. Mr. Gee
at first stoutly refused. Then, as they warned him that he would be kept a
prisoner in total darkness in this horrible den until he agreed to their
demands, he gave in, and signed the documents thus illegally extorted. One
was a cheque for £800 on his bankers, the other an order to Mr. Bell of
Newport, Essex, requesting the surrender of a deed.
His captors having thus succeeded in their designs, left him, no doubt to
realize the money. The door of his place of durance stood open, and Mr.
Gee began to consider whether he might not escape. For three hours he
struggled without success with his bonds, but at length managed to wriggle
out of the chain which confined his body, and soon loosened the ropes
round his feet. Thus free, he eluded the vigilance of two of the party, who
were at dinner in the front kitchen, and creeping out into the garden at the
back, climbed the wall, and got into the street. His first act was to send a
messenger to stop the cheque and the order to Mr. Bell, his next to seek the
help of the police. Two Bow Street runners were despatched to the house in
York Street, which had evidently been taken on purpose for the outrage.

There was no furniture in the place, and the den in the kitchen had been
recently and specially constructed of boards of immense strength and
thickness. It was a cell five feet by three, within another, the intervening
being filled with rammed earth to deaden the sound. A fixed seat, two feet,
was at one end, and a foot above it was a bar with a staple, to which hung
the body chain.
On the arrival of the police the house was empty. The two men on guard
had gone off immediately after Mr. Gee had escaped, but they returned later
in the day, and were apprehended. Inquiries set on foot also elicited the
suspicion that the person who had represented Mrs. Canning’s brother was a
blind man named Edwards, who had taken this house in York Street, and
who was known to be a frequent visitor at Mrs. Canning’s. A watch was set
on him at her house, where he was soon afterwards arrested. Edwards,
whom Mr. Gee easily identified with the others, at once admitted that he
was the prime mover of the conspiracy. He had sought by all legal means to
obtain possession of the £2000, but had failed, and had had recourse to
more violent means. It turned out that he was really married to Mrs.
Canning, both having been recognized by the clergyman who had
performed the ceremony, and the assault had been committed to secure the
money which Mrs. Canning had lost by re-marriage. All three men were
committed for trial, although Edwards wished to exculpate the others as
having only acted under his order. At the trial the indictment charging them
with felony could not be sustained, but they were found guilty of conspiracy
and assault. Edwards was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment in
Newgate, Weedon and Lecasser to twelve and six months respectively in
Coldbath Fields.
At no period could thieves in London or elsewhere have prospered had
they been unable to dispose of their ill-gotten goods. The trade of fence, or
receiver, therefore, is very nearly as old as the crimes which it so obviously
fostered.[115] One of the most notorious, and for a time most successful
practitioners in this illicit trade, passed through Newgate in 1831. The name
of Ikey Solomons was long remembered by thief and thief-taker. He began
as an itinerant street vendor at eight, at ten he passed bad money, at fourteen
he was a pickpocket and a “duffer,” or a seller of sham goods. He early saw
the profits to be made out of purchasing stolen goods, but could not embark
in it at first for want of capital. He was taken up when still in his teens for
stealing a pocket-book, and was sentenced to transportation, but did not get

beyond the hulks at Chatham. On his release an uncle, a slop-seller in
Chatham, gave him a situation as “barker,” or salesman, at which he
realized £150 within a couple of years. With this capital he returned to
London and set up as a fence. He had such great aptitude for business, and
such a thorough knowledge of the real value of goods, that he was soon
admitted to be one of the best judges known of all kinds of property, from a
glass bottle to a five hundred guinea chronometer. But he never paid more
than a fixed price for all articles of the same class, whatever their intrinsic
value. Thus, a watch was paid for as a watch, whether it was of gold or
silver; a piece of linen as such, whether the stuff was coarse or fine. This
rule in dealing with stolen goods continues to this day, and has made the
fortune of many since Ikey.
Solomons also established a system of provincial agency, by which
stolen goods were passed on from London to the seaports, and so abroad.
Jewels were re-set, diamonds re-faced; all marks by which other articles
might be identified, the selvages of linen, the stamps on shoes, the number
and names on watches, were carefully removed or obliterated after the
goods passed out of his hands. On one occasion the whole of the proceeds
of a robbery from a boot shop was traced to Solomons’; the owner came
with the police, and was morally convinced that it was his property, but
could not positively identify it, and Ikey defied them to remove a single
shoe. In the end the injured bootmaker agreed to buy back his stolen stock
at the price Solomons had paid for it, and it cost him about a hundred
pounds to re-stock his shop with his own goods.
As a general rule Ikey Solomons confined his purchases to small articles,
mostly of jewellery and plate, which he kept concealed in a hiding-place
with a trap-door just under his bed. He lived in Rosemary Lane, and
sometimes he had as much as £20,000 worth of goods secreted on the
premises. When his trade was busiest he set up a second establishment, at
the head of which, although he was married, he put another lady, with
whom he was on intimate terms. The second house was in Lower Queen
Street, Islington, and he used it for some time as a depot for valuables. But
it was eventually discovered by Mrs. Solomons, a very jealous wife, and
this, with the danger arising from an extensive robbery of watches in
Cheapside, in which Ikey was implicated as a receiver, led him to think
seriously of trying his fortunes in another land. He was about to emigrate to
New South Wales, when he was arrested at Islington and committed to

Newgate on a charge of receiving stolen goods. While thus incarcerated he
managed to escape from custody, but not actually from gaol, by an
ingenious contrivance which is worth mentioning. He claimed to be
admitted to bail, and was taken from Newgate on a writ of habeas before
one of the judges sitting at Westminster. He was conveyed in a coach driven
by a confederate, and under the escort of a couple of turnkeys. Solomons,
while waiting to appear in court, persuaded the turnkeys to take him to a
public-house, where all might “refresh.” While there he was joined by his
wife and other friends. After a short carouse the prisoner went into
Westminster, his case was heard, bail refused, and he was ordered back to
Newgate. But he once more persuaded the turnkeys to pause at the public,
where more liquor was consumed. When the journey was resumed, Mrs.
Solomons accompanied her husband in the coach. Half-way to Newgate she
was taken with a fit. One turnkey was stupidly drunk, and Ikey persuaded
the other, who was not much better, to let the coach change and pass
Petticoat Lane en route to the gaol, where the suffering woman might be
handed over to her friends. On stopping at a door in this low street, Ikey
jumped out, ran into the house, slamming the door behind him. He passed
through and out at the back, and was soon beyond pursuit. By-and-by the
turnkeys, sobered by their loss, returned to Newgate alone, and pleaded in
excuse that they had been drugged.
Ikey left no traces, and the police could hear nothing of him. He had in
fact gone out of the country, to Copenhagen, whence he passed on to New
York. There he devoted himself to the circulation of forged notes. He was
also anxious to do business in watches, and begged his wife to send him
over a consignment of cheap “righteous” watches, or such as had been
honestly obtained, and not “on the cross.” But Mrs. Solomons could not
resist the temptation to dabble in stolen goods, and she was found shipping
watches of the wrong category to New York. For this she received a
sentence of fourteen years’ transportation, and was sent to Van Diemen’s
Land. Ikey joined her at Hobart Town, where they set up a general shop,
and soon began to prosper. He was, however, recognized, and ere long an
order came out from home for his arrest and transfer to England, which
presently followed, and he again found himself an inmate of Newgate,
waiting trial as a receiver and a prison-breaker. He was indicted on eight
charges, two only of which were substantiated, but on each of them he
received a sentence of seven years’ transportation. At his own request he

was reconveyed to Hobart Town, where his son had been carrying on the
business. Whether Ikey was “assigned” to his own family is not recorded,
but no doubt he succeeded to his own property when the term of servitude
had expired.
No doubt, on the removal of Ikey Solomons from the scene, his mantle
fell upon worthy successors. There was an increase rather than an
abatement in jewel and bullion robberies in the years immediately
following, and the thieves seem to have had no difficulty in disposing of
their spoil. One of the largest robberies of its class was that effected upon
the Custom House in the winter of 1834. A large amount of specie was
nearly always retained here in the department of the Receiver of Fines. This
was known to some clerks in the office, who began to consider how they
might lay hands on a lot of cash. Being inexperienced, they decided to call
in the services of a couple of professional housebreakers, Jordan and
Sullivan, who at once set to work in a business-like way to obtain
impressions of the keys of the strong room and chest. But before
committing themselves to an attempt on the latter, it was of importance to
ascertain how much it usually contained. For this purpose Jordan waited on
the receiver to make a small payment, for which he tendered a fifty-pound
note. The chest was opened to give change, and a heavy tray lifted out
which plainly held some £4000 in cash. Some difficulty then arose as to
gaining admission to the strong room, and it was arranged that a man, May,
another Custom House clerk, should be introduced into the building, and
secreted there during the night to accomplish the robbery. May was
smuggled in through a window on the esplanade behind an opened
umbrella. When the place was quite deserted he broke open the chest and
stole £4700 in notes, with a quantity of gold and some silver. He went out
next morning with the booty when the doors were re-opened, and attracted
no attention. The spoil was fairly divided; part of the notes were disposed of
to a travelling “receiver,” who passed over to the Continent and there
cashed them easily.
This occurred in November 1834. The Custom House officials were in a
state of consternation, and the police were unable at first to get on the track
of the thieves. While the excitement was still fresh, a new robbery of
diamonds was committed at a bonded warehouse in the immediate
neighbourhood, on Custom House Quay. The jewels had belonged to a
Spanish countess recently deceased, who had sent them to England for

greater security on the outbreak of the first Carlist war. At her death the
diamonds were divided between her four daughters, but only half had been
claimed, and at the time of the robbery there were still £6000 worth in the
warehouse. These were deposited in an iron chest of great strength on the
second floor. The thieves it was supposed had secreted themselves in the
warehouse during business hours, and waited till night to carry out their
plans. Some ham sandwiches, several cigar ends, and two empty
champagne bottles were found on the premises next day, showing how they
had passed their time. They had had serious work to get at the diamonds. It
was necessary to force one heavy door from its hinges, and to cut through
the thick panels of another. The lock and fastenings of the chest were forced
by means of a “jack,” an instrument known to housebreakers, which if
introduced into a keyhole, and worked like a bit and brace, will soon
destroy the strongest lock. The thieves were satisfied with the diamonds;
they broke open other cases containing gold watches and plate, but
abstracted nothing.
The police were of opinion that these robberies were both the work of
the same hand. But it was not until the autumn that they traced some of the
notes stolen from the Custom House to Jordan and Sullivan. About this time
also suspicion fell upon Huey, one of the clerks, who was arrested soon
afterwards, and made a clean breast of the whole affair. There was a hunt
for the two well-known house-breakers, who were eventually heard of at a
lodging in Kennington. But they at once made tracks, and took up their
residence under assumed names in a tavern in Bloomsbury. The police lost
all trace of them for some days, but at length Sullivan’s brother was
followed from the house in Kennington to the above-mentioned tavern.
Both the thieves were now apprehended, but only a small portion of the lost
property was recovered, notwithstanding a minute search through the room
they had occupied. After their arrest, Jordan’s wife and Sullivan’s brother
came to the inn, and begged to be allowed to visit this room; but their
request, in spite of their earnest entreaties, was refused, at the instigation of
the police. A few days later a frequent guest at the tavern arrived, and had
this same room allotted to him. A fire was lit in it, and the maid in doing so
threw a lot of rubbish, as it seemed, which had accumulated under the grate,
on top of the burning coals. By-and-by the occupant of the room noticed
something glittering in the centre of the fire, which, to inspect more closely,
he took out with the tongs. It was a large gold brooch set in pearls, but a

portion of the mounting had melted with the heat. The fire was raked out,
and in the ashes were found seven large and four dozen small brilliants, also
seven emeralds, one of them of considerable size. A part of the “swag”
stolen from the bonded warehouse was thus recovered, but it was supposed
that a number of the stolen notes had perished in the fire.
The condign punishment meted out to these Custom House robbers had
no deterrent effect seemingly. Within three months, three new and most
mysterious burglaries were committed at the West End, all in houses
adjoining each other. One was occupied by the Portuguese ambassador, who
lost a quantity of jewellery from an escritoire, and his neighbours lost plate
and cash. Not the slightest clue to these large affairs was ever obtained, but
it is probable that they were “put up” jobs, or managed with the complicity
of servants. The next year twelve thousand sovereigns were cleverly stolen
in the Mile End Road.
The gold-dust robbery of 1839, the first of its kind, was cleverly and
carefully planned with the assistance of a dishonest employé. A young man
named Caspar, clerk to a steam-ship company, learnt through the firm’s
correspondence that a quantity of gold-dust brought in a man-of-war from
Brazil had been transhipped at Falmouth for conveyance to London. The
letter informed him of the marks and sizes of the cases containing the
precious metal, and he with his father arranged that a messenger should call
for the stuff with forged credentials, and anticipating the rightful owner. The
fraudulent messenger, by the help of young Caspar, established his claim to
the boxes, paid the wharfage dues, and carried off the gold-dust. Presently
the proper person arrived from the consignees, but found the gold-dust
gone. The police were at once employed, and after infinite pains they
discovered the person, one Moss, who had acted as the messenger. Moss
was known to be intimate with the elder Caspar, father of the clerk to the
steam-ship company, and these facts were deemed sufficient to justify the
arrest of all three. They also ascertained that a gold-refiner, Solomons, had
sold bar gold to the value of £1200 to certain bullion dealers. Solomons was
not straightforward in his replies as to where he got the gold, and he was
soon placed in the dock with the Caspars and Moss. Moss presently turned
approver, and implicated “Money Moses,” another Jew, for the whole affair
had been planned and executed by members of the Hebrew persuasion.
“Money Moses” had received the stolen gold-dust from Moss’ father-in-
law, Davis, or Isaacs, who was never arrested, and passed it on to Solomons

by his daughter, a widow named Abrahams. Solomons was now also
admitted as a witness, and his evidence, with that of Moss, secured the
transportation of the principal actors in the theft. In the course of the trial it
came out that almost every one concerned except the Caspars had
endeavoured to defraud his accomplices. Moss peached because he declared
he had been done out of the proper price of the gold-dust; but it was clear
that he had tried to appropriate the whole of the stuff, instead of handing it
or the price of it back to the Caspars. “Money Moses” and Mrs. Abrahams
imposed upon Moss as to the price paid by Solomons; Mrs. Abrahams
imposed upon her father by abstracting a portion of the dust and selling it
on her own account; Solomons cheated the whole lot by retaining half the
gold in his possession, and only giving an I. O. U. for it, which he refused
to redeem on account of the row about the robbery.
Moses, it may be added, was a direct descendant of Ikey Solomons.[116]
He was ostensibly a publican, and kept the Black Lion in Vinegar Yard,
Drury Lane, where secretly he did business as one of the most daring and
successful fencers ever known in the metropolis. His arrest and conviction
cast dismay over the whole gang of receivers, and for a time seriously
checked the nefarious traffic. It may be added that prison life did not agree
with “Money Moses”; a striking change came over his appearance while in
Newgate. Before his confinement he had been a sleek round person,
addicted obviously to the pleasures of the table. He did not thrive on prison
fare, now more strictly meagre, thanks to the inspectors and the more
stringent discipline, and before he embarked for Australia to undergo his
fourteen years, he was reported to have fallen away to a shadow.
Having brought down the records of great frauds, forgeries, and thefts
from about 1825 to 1840, I will now retrace my steps and give some
account of the more remarkable murders during that period. No murder has
created greater sensation and horror throughout England than that of Mr.
Weare by Thurtell, Hunt, and Probert. As this was accomplished beyond the
limits of the metropolis, and its perpetrators arraigned at Hertford, where
the principal actor suffered death, the case hardly comes within the limits of
my subject. But Probert, who turned king’s evidence, and materially
assisted conviction, was tried at the Old Bailey the following year for horse-
stealing, and hanged in front of Newgate. The murder was still fresh in the
memory of the populace, and Probert was all but lynched on his way to
gaol. According to his statement, when sentenced to death, he had been

driven to horse-stealing by the execration which had pursued him after the
murder. “Every door had been closed against him, every hope of future
support blasted. Since the calamitous event,” he went on, “that happened at
Hertford, I have been a lost man.” The event which he styles calamitous we
may well characterize as one of the most deliberately atrocious murders on
record. Thurtell was a gambler, and Weare had won a good deal of money
from him. Weare was supposed to carry a “private bank” about with him in
a pocket in his under waistcoat. To obtain possession of this, Thurtell with
his two associates resolved to kill him. The victim was invited to visit
Probert’s cottage in the country near Elstree. Thurtell drove him down in a
gig, “to be killed as he travelled,” in Thurtell’s own words. The others
followed, and on overtaking Thurtell, found he had done the job alone in a
retired part of the road known as Gill’s Hill Lane. The murderer explained
that he had first fired a pistol at Weare’s head, but the shot glanced off his
cheek. Then he attacked the other’s throat with a penknife, and last of all
drove the pistol barrel into his forehead. After the murder the villains
divided the spoil, and went on to Probert’s cottage, and supped off pork-
chops brought down on purpose. During the night they sought to dispose of
the body by throwing it into a pond, but two days later had to throw it into
another pond. Meanwhile the discovery of pistol and knife spattered with
human blood and brains raised the alarm, and suspicion fell upon the three
murderers, who were arrested. The crime was brought home to Thurtell by
the confession of Hunt, one of his accomplices, who took the police to the
pond, where the remains of the unfortunate Mr. Weare were discovered,
sunk in a sack weighted by stones. Probert was then admitted as a witness,
and the case was fully proved against Thurtell, who was hanged in front of
Hertford Gaol. Hunt, in consideration of the information he had given,
escaped death, and was sentenced to transportation for life.
Widespread horror and indignation was evoked throughout the kingdom
by the discovery of the series of atrocious murders perpetrated in Edinburgh
by the miscreants Burke and Hare, the first of whom has added to the
British language a synonym for illegal suppression. The crimes of these
inhuman purveyors to medical science do not fall within the limits of this
work. But Burke and Hare had their imitators further south, and of these
Bishop and Williams, who were guilty of many peculiar atrocities, ended
their murderous careers in front of the debtors’ door at Newgate. Bishop,
whose real name was Head, married a half-sister of Williams’. Williams

was a professional resurrectionist, or body-snatcher, a trade almost openly
countenanced when “subjects” for the anatomy schools were only to be got
by rifling graves, or worse. Bishop was a carpenter, but having been
suddenly thrown out of work, he joined his brother-in-law in his line of
business. After a little Bishop got weary of the dangers and fatigues of
exhumation, and proposed to Williams that instead of disinterring they
should murder their subjects. Bishop confessed that he was moved to this
by the example of Burke and Hare. They pursued their terrible trade for five
years without scruple and without detection. Eventually the law overtook
them, but almost by accident. They presented themselves about noon one
day at the dissecting room of King’s College Hospital, accompanied by a
third man, an avowed “snatcher” and habitué of the Fortune of War, a
public-house in Smithfield frequented openly by men of this awful
profession. This man, May, asked the porter at King’s College if “he wanted
anything?” the euphemism for offering a body. The porter asked what he
had got, and the answer was, a male subject. Reference was made to Mr.
Partridge, the demonstrator in anatomy, and after some haggling they
agreed on a price, and in the afternoon the snatchers brought a hamper
which contained a body in a sack. The porter received it, but from its
freshness became suspicious of foul play. Mr. Partridge was sent for, and he
with some of the students soon decided that the corpse had not died a
natural death. The snatchers were detained, the police sent for, and arrest
followed as a matter of course.
An inquest was held on the body, which was identified as that of an
Italian boy, Carlo Ferrari, who made a living by exhibiting white mice
about the streets, and the jury returned a verdict of wilful murder against
persons unknown, expressing a strong opinion that Bishop, Williams, and
May had been concerned in the transaction. Meanwhile, a search had been
made at Nova Scotia Gardens, Bethnal Green, where Bishop and Williams
lived. At first nothing peculiar was found; but at a second search the back-
garden ground was dug up, and in one corner, at some depth, a bundle of
clothes were unearthed, which, with a hairy cap, were known to be what
Ferrari had worn when last seen. In another portion of the garden more
clothing, partly male and partly female, was discovered, plainly pointing to
the perpetration of other crimes. These facts were represented before the
police magistrate who examined Bishop and his fellows, and further
incriminating evidence adduced, to the effect that the prisoners had bartered

for a coach to carry “a stiff ’un”; they had also been seen to leave their
cottage, carrying out a sack with something heavy inside. On this they were
fully committed to Newgate for trial. This trial came off in due course at the
Central Criminal Court, where the prisoners were charged on two counts,
one that of the murder of the Italian boy, the other that of a boy unknown.
The evidence from first to last was circumstantial, but the jury, after a short
deliberation, did not hesitate to bring in a verdict of guilty, and all three
were condemned to death.
Shortly before the day fixed for execution, Bishop made a full
confession, the bulk of which bore the impress of truth, although it included
statements that were improbable and unsubstantiated. He asserted that the
victim was a Lincolnshire lad, and not an Italian boy, although the latter
was fully proved. According to the confession, death had been inflicted by
drowning in a well, whereas the medical evidence all pointed to violence. It
was, however, pretty clear that this victim, like preceding ones, had been
lured to Nova Scotia Gardens, and there drugged with a large dose of
laudanum. While they were in a state of insensibility the murder was
committed. Bishop’s confession was endorsed by Williams, and the
immediate result was the respite of May. A very painful scene occurred in
Newgate when the news of his escape from death was imparted to May. He
fainted, and the warrant of mercy nearly proved his death-blow. The other
two looked on at his agitation with an indifference amounting to apathy.
The execution took place a week or two later, in the presence of such a
crowd as had not been seen near Newgate for years.
I will close this chapter with a brief account of another murder, the
memory of which is still fresh in the minds of Londoners, although half a
century has passed since it was committed. The horror with which
Greenacre’s crime struck the town was unparalleled since the time when
Catherine Hayes slew her husband. There were many features of
resemblance in these crimes. The decapitation and dismemberment, the
bestowal of the remains in various parts of the town, the preservation of the
head in spirits of wine, in the hope that the features might some day be
recognized, were alike in both. The murder in both cases was long a
profound mystery. In this which I am now describing, a bricklayer found a
human trunk near some new buildings in the Edgeware Road, one morning
in the last week of 1836. The inquest on these remains, which medical
examination showed to be those of a female, returned a verdict of wilful

murder against some person unknown. On the 7th July, 1837, the lockman
of “Ben Jonson lock,” in Stepney Fields, found a human head jammed into
the lock gates. Closer investigation proved that it belonged to the trunk
already discovered on the 2nd February. A further discovery was made in an
osier bed near Cold Harbour Lane, Camberwell, where a workman found a
bundle containing two human legs, in a drain. These were the missing
members of the same mutilated trunk, and there was now evidence
sufficient to establish conclusively that the woman thus collected piecemeal
had been barbarously done to death. But the affair still remained a profound
mystery. No light was thrown upon it till, towards the end of March, a Mr.
Gay of Goodge Street came to view the head, and immediately recognized
it as that of a widowed sister, Hannah Brown, who had been missing since
the previous Christmas Day.
The murdered individual was thus identified. The next step was to
ascertain where and with whom she had last been seen. This brought
suspicion on to a certain James Greenacre, whom she was to have married,
and in whose company she had left her own lodgings to visit his in
Camberwell. The police wished to refer to Greenacre, but as he was not
forthcoming, a warrant was issued for his apprehension, which was effected
at Kennington on the 24th March. A woman named Gale, who lived with
him, was arrested at the same time. The prisoners were examined at the
Marylebone police court. Greenacre, a stout, middle-aged man, wrapped in
a brown greatcoat, assumed an air of insolent bravado; but his despair must
have been great, as was evident from his attempt to strangle himself in the
station-house. Suspicion grew almost to certainty as the evidence was
unfolded. Mrs. Brown was a washer-woman, supposed to be worth some
money; hence Greenacre’s offer of marriage. She had realized all her
effects, and brought them with her furniture to Greenacre’s lodgings. The
two when married were to emigrate to Hudson’s Bay. Whether it was greed
or a quarrel that drove Greenacre to the desperate deed remains obscure.
They were apparently good friends when last seen together at a neighbour’s,
where they seemed “perfectly happy and sociable, and eager for the
wedding day.” But Greenacre in his confession pretended that he and his
intended had quarrelled over her property or the want of it, and that in a
moment of anger he knocked her down. He thought he had killed her, and in
his terror began at once to consider how he might dispose of the body and
escape arrest. While she was senseless, but really still alive, he cut off her

head, and dismembered the body in the manner already described. It is
scarcely probable that he would have gone to this extremity if he had had
no previous evil intention, and the most probable inference is that he
inveigled Mrs. Brown to his lodgings with the set purpose of taking her life.
His measures for the disposal of the corpus delicti remind us of those
taken by Mrs. Hayes and her associates, or of Gardelle’s frantic efforts to
conceal his crime. The most ghastly part of the story is that which deals
with his getting rid of the head. This, wrapped up in a silk handkerchief, he
carried under his coat-flaps through the streets, and afterwards on his cap in
a crowded city omnibus. It was not until he left the ’bus, and walked up by
the Regent’s Canal, that he conceived the idea of throwing the head into the
water. Another day elapsed before he got rid of the rest of the body, all of
which, according to his own confession, made no doubt with the idea of
exonerating Mrs. Gale, he accomplished without her assistance. On the
other hand, it was adduced in evidence that Mrs. Gale had been at his
lodgings the very day after the murder, and was seen to be busily engaged
in washing down the house with bucket and mop.
Greenacre, when tried at the Old Bailey, admitted that he had been guilty
of manslaughter. While conversing with Mrs. Brown, he declared the
unfortunate woman was rocking herself to and fro in a chair; as she leant
back he put his foot against the chair, and so tilted it over. Mrs. Brown fell
with it, and Greenacre, to his horror, found that she was dead. But the
medical evidence was clear that the decapitation had been effected during
life, and the jury, after a short deliberation, without hesitation brought in a
verdict of wilful murder. The woman Gale was also found guilty, but
sentence of death was only passed on Greenacre. The execution was, as
usual, attended by an immense concourse, and Greenacre died amidst the
loudest execrations. Gale was sentenced to penal servitude for life.

CHAPTER VIII.

NEWGATE NOTORIETIES (continued).

Increase in crimes of fraud—Edward Beaumont Smith—Casting away ships—The ‘Dryad’—
Wrecked by the Wallaces—Another clergyman-forger, Dr. Bailey—The Barber Fletcher frauds to
obtain unclaimed stock in the funds—The Bank of England robbed by one of its clerks of £8000—
Other daring robberies—Burglaries at Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace—Ingenious plate
robbery at Lord Fitzgerald’s in Belgrave Square—Stealing plate from clubs by a member—A large
parcel of rough diamonds stolen—More murders—The valet Courvoisier murders his master, Lord
William Russell—His trial and sentence—His confession, attempted suicide, and demeanour at the
scaffold—Daniel Good murders his wife—Strange discovery of the crime—Pursuit and arrest of
the murderer—Hocker kills Mr. Delarue—Murderer cannot tear himself from the scene of his
crime—Epidemic of murder in 1848-9—Rush—Gleeson Wilson—The Mannings and their victim,
O’Connor—The cold-blooded scheme—How carried out, and how discovered—One of the first
instances of the employment of the electric telegraph to arrest the murderers—Their trial—Violent
conduct of Mrs. Manning—The execution at Horsemonger Lane Gaol—Charles Dickens on this
execution—Other murderers—Robert Marley—Cannon, the chimney-sweep, who makes a
murderous assault upon and nearly killed a policeman—Mobbs, the brutal husband—Barthelemy
—Series of gigantic frauds, commencing in 1850—Walter Watts, the inventor of the new crime—
The two lives he led—Immense defalcations—Sentenced for stealing a bit of paper value one
penny—Commits suicide—The forgeries of R. F. Pries—Those of Joseph Windle Cole—Raises
funds on fictitious dock warrants—The bankers Messrs. Strahan, Paul, and Bates tried for
disposing of securities they held on deposit—Systematic embezzlement by Robson, a clerk in the
Crystal Palace Company—Lionel Redpath carries on still more audacious frauds—His way of life
—A patron of art, and foremost in all good works—His detection and flight—Is captured, tried,
and sentenced to transportation—Big prizes still to be had by daring thieves—The bullion robbery
on the South-Eastern—How planned and carried out—Detected by accident—The bold and
systematic forgeries of Saward, or Jem the Penman—His method—How caught—Sentenced to
transportation.

AS the century advanced crimes of fraud increased. They not only became
more numerous, but they were on a wider scale. The most extensive and
systematic robberies were planned and carried out so as long to escape
detection. One of the earliest of the big operators in fraudulent finance was
Edward Beaumont Smith, who was convicted in 1841 of uttering false
exchequer bills to an almost fabulous amount. A not entirely novel kind of
fraud, but one carried out on a larger scale than heretofore, came to light in
this same year, 1841. This was the wilful shipwreck and casting away of a
vessel which, with her supposed cargo, had been heavily insured. The
‘Dryad’ was a brig owned principally by two persons named Wallace, one a
seaman, the other merchant. She was freighted by the firm of Zulueta and
Co. for a voyage to Santa Cruz. Her owners insured her for a full sum of
£2000, after which the Wallaces insured her privily with other underwriters
for a second sum of £2000. After this, on the faith of forced bills of lading,
the captain, Loose by name, being a party to the intended fraud, they
obtained further insurances on goods never shipped. It was fully proved in
evidence that when the ‘Dryad’ sailed she carried nothing but the cargo

belonging to Zulueta and Co. Yet the Wallaces pretended to have put on
board quantities of flannels, cloths, cotton prints, beef, pork, butter, and
earthenwares, on all of which they effected insurances. Loose had his
instructions to cast away the ship on the first possible opportunity, and from
the time of his leaving Liverpool he acted in a manner which excited the
suspicions of the crew. The larboard pump was suffered to remain choked
up, and the long-boat was fitted with tackles and held ready for use at a
moment’s notice. The ship, however, met with exasperatingly fine weather,
and it was not until the captain reached the West India Islands that he got a
chance of accomplishing his crime. At a place called the Silver Keys he ran
the ship on the reef. But another ship, concluding that he was acting in
ignorance, rendered him assistance. The ‘Dryad’ was got off, repaired, and
her voyage renewed to Santa Cruz. He crept along the coast close in shore,
looking for a quiet spot to cast away the ship, and at last, when within
fifteen miles of port, with wind and weather perfectly fair, he ran her on to
the rocks. Even then she might have been saved, but the captain would not
suffer the crew to act. Nearly the whole of the cargo was lost as well as the
ship. The captain and crew, however, got safely to Jamaica, and so to
England; the captain dying on the voyage home.
The crime soon became public. Mate, carpenter, and crew were eager to
disavow complicity, and voluntarily gave information. The Wallaces were
arrested, committed to Newgate, and tried at the Old Bailey. The case was
clearly proved against them, and both were sentenced to transportation for
life. While lying in Newgate, awaiting removal to the convict ship, both
prisoners made full confessions. According to their own statements the loss
of the ‘Dryad’ was only one of six intentional shipwrecks with which they
had been concerned. The crime of fraudulent insurance they declared was
very common, and the underwriters must have lost great sums in this way.
The merchant Wallace said he had been led into the crime by the advice and
example of a city friend who had gone largely into this nefarious business;
this Wallace added that his friend had made several voyages with the
distinct intention of superintending the predetermined shipwrecks. The
other Wallace, the sailor, also traced his lapse into crime to evil counsel. He
was an honest sea-captain, he said, trading from Liverpool, where once he
had the misfortune to be introduced to a man of wealth, the foundations of
which had been laid by buying old ships on purpose to cast them away. This
person made much of Wallace, encouraged his attentions to his daughter,

and tempted him to take to fraudulent insurance as a certain method of
achieving fortune. Wallace’s relations warned him against his Liverpool
friend, but he would not take their advice, and developing his transactions,
ended as we have seen.
A clergyman nearly a century later followed in the steps of Dr. Dodd, but
did not under more humane laws lose his life. The Rev. W. Bailey, LL.D.,
was convicted at the Central Criminal Court, in February 1843, of forgery.
A notorious miser, Robert Smith, had recently died in Seven Dials, where
he had amassed a considerable fortune. But among the charges on the estate
he left was a promissory note for £2875, produced by Dr. Bailey, and
purporting to be signed by Smith. The executors to the estate disputed the
validity of this document. Miss Bailey, the doctor’s sister, in whose favour
the note was said to have been given, then brought an action against the
administrators, and at the trial Dr. Bailey swore that the note had been given
him by Smith. The jury did not believe him, and the verdict was for the
defendants. Subsequently Bailey was arrested on a charge of forgery, and
after a long trial found guilty. His sentence was transportation for life.
A gigantic conspiracy to defraud was discovered in the following year,
when a solicitor named William Henry Barber, Joshua Fletcher a surgeon,
and three others were charged with forging wills for the purpose of
obtaining unclaimed stock in the funds. There were two separate affairs. In
the first a maiden lady, Miss Slack, who was the possessor of two separate
sums in consols, neglected through strange carelessness on her own part
and that of her friends to draw the dividends on more than one sum. The
other, remaining unclaimed for ten years, was transferred at the end of that
time to the commissioners for the reduction of the National Debt. Barber, it
was said, became aware of this, and that he gained access to Miss Slack on
pretence of conveying to her some funded property left her by an aunt. By
this means her signature was obtained; a forged will was prepared
bequeathing the unclaimed stock to Miss Slack; a note purporting to be
from Miss Slack was addressed to the governor of the Bank of England,
begging that the said stock might be handed over to her, and a person
calling herself Miss Slack duly attended at the bank, where the money was
handed over to her in proper form. A second will, also forged, was
propounded at Doctors Commons as that of a Mrs. Hunt of Bristol. Mrs.
Hunt had left money in the funds which remained unclaimed, and had been
transferred, as in Miss Slack’s case. Here again the money, with ten years’

interest, was handed over to Barber and another calling himself Thomas
Hunt, an executor of the will. It was shown that the will must be a forgery,
as its signature was dated 1829, whereas Mrs. Hunt actually died in 1806. A
third similar fraud to the amount of £2000 was also brought to light.
Fletcher was the moving spirit of the whole business. It was he who had
introduced Barber to Miss Slack, and held all the threads of these intricate
and nefarious transactions. Barber and Fletcher were both transported for
life, although Fletcher declared that Barber was innocent, and had no guilty
knowledge of what was being done. Barber was subsequently pardoned, but
was not replaced on the rolls as an attorney till 1855, when Lord Campbell
delivered judgment on Barber’s petition, to the effect that “the evidence to
establish his (Barber’s) connivance in the frauds was too doubtful for us to
continue his exclusion any longer.”
Banks and bankers continued to be victimized. In 1844 the Bank of
England was defrauded of a sum of £8000 by one of its clerks, Burgess, in
conjunction with an accomplice named Elder. Burgess fraudulently
transferred consols to the above amount, standing in the name of Mr.
Oxenford, to another party. A person, Elder of course, who personated
Oxenford, attended at the bank to complete the transfer and sell the stock.
Burgess, who was purposely on leave from the bank, effected the sale,
which was paid for with a cheque for nearly the whole amount on
Lubbock’s Bank. Burgess and Elder proceeded in company to cash this, but
as they wanted all gold, the cashier gave them eight Bank of England notes
for £1000 each, saying that they could get so much specie nowhere else.
Thither Elder went alone, provided with a number of canvas and one large
carpet-bag. But when the latter was filled with gold it was too heavy to lift,
and Elder had to be assisted by two bank porters, who carried it for him to a
carriage waiting near the Mansion House. The thieves, for Elder was soon
joined by Burgess, drove together to Ben Caunt’s, the pugilist’s, public-
house in St. Martin’s Lane, where the cash was transferred from the carpet-
bag to a portmanteau. The same evening both started for Liverpool, and
embarking on board the mail steamer ‘Britannia,’ escaped to the United
States.
Burgess’ continued absence was soon noticed at the bank. Suspicions
were aroused when it was found that he had been employed in selling stock
for Mr. Oxenford, which developed into certainty as soon as that gentleman
was referred to. Mr. Oxenford having denied that he had made any transfer

of stock, the matter was at once put into the hands of the police. A smart
detective, Forrester, after a little inquiry, established the fact that the man
who had personated Mr. Oxenford was a horse-dealer named Joseph Elder,
an intimate acquaintance of Burgess’. Forrester next traced the fugitives to
Liverpool, and thence to Halifax, whither he followed them, accompanied
by a confidential clerk from the bank. At Halifax Forrester learnt that the
men he wanted had gone on to Boston, thence to Buffalo and Canada, and
back to Boston. He found them at length residing at the latter place, one as a
landed proprietor, the other as a publican. Elder, the former, was soon
apprehended at his house, but he evaded the law by hanging himself with
his pocket-handkerchief. The inn belonging to Burgess was surrounded, but
he escaped through a back door on to the river, and rowed off in a boat to a
hiding-place in the woods. Next day a person betrayed him for the reward,
and he was soon captured. The proceeds of the robbery were lodged in a
Boston bank, but four hundred sovereigns were found on Elder, while two
hundred more were found in Burgess’ effects. Burgess was eventually
brought back to England, tried at the Central Criminal Court, and sentenced
to transportation for life.
Within a month or two the bank of Messrs. Rogers and Co., Clement’s
Lane, was broken into. Robberies as daring in conception as they were
boldly executed were common enough. One night a quantity of plate was
stolen from Windsor Castle; another time Buckingham Palace was robbed.
Of this class was the ingenious yet peculiarly simple robbery effected at the
house of Lord Fitzgerald in Belgrave Square. The butler, on the occasion of
a death in the family, when the house was in some confusion, arranged with
a burglar to come in, and with another carry off the plate-chest in broad
daylight, and as a matter of business. No one interfered or asked any
questions. The thief walked into the house in Belgrave Square, and openly
carried off the plate-chest, deposited it in a light cart at the door, and drove
away. Howse, the steward, accused the other servants, but they retorted,
declaring that he had been visited by the thief the day previous, whom he
had shown over the plate closet. Howse and his accomplice were arrested;
the former was found guilty and sentenced to fifteen years, but the latter
was acquitted.
Stealing plate was about this period the crime of a more aristocratic
thief. The club spoons and other articles of plate were long a source of
profitable income to a gentleman named Ashley, who belonged to five good

London clubs—the Junior United Service, the Union, Reform, Colonial,
and Erecthæum clubs. When one of these clubs was taken in at the Army
and Navy, that establishment also suffered. Suspicion fell at length upon
Ashley, who was seen to handle the forks and spoons at table in a strange
manner. A watch was set on his house, in Allington Street, Pimlico, and one
day a police constable tracked him to a silversmith’s in Holborn Hill, where
Ashley produced four silver spoons, and begged that his initials might be
engraved upon them. Ashley was arrested as he left the shop; the spoons
were impounded, and it was found that the club monogram had been erased
from them. On a search of the prisoner’s lodgings in Allington Street, a
silver fork was found, a number of pawnbrokers’ duplicates, and three small
files. It was proved at the trial that Ashley had asked his landlady for brick-
dust and leather, and it was contended that these with the files were used to
alter the marks on the plate. At most of the clubs the servants had been
mulcted to make good lost plate, which had no doubt been stolen by the
prisoner. Several pawnbrokers were subpœnaed and obliged to surrender
plate, to the extent in some cases of a couple of dozen of spoons or forks,
which the various club secretaries identified as the property of their
respective clubs. Ashley was the son of an army agent and banker, and
many witnesses were brought to attest to his previous good character, but he
was found guilty and sentenced to seven years’ transportation.
A robbery of a somewhat novel kind was executed in rather a bungling
fashion by Ker, a sea-captain, whose ship brought home a mixed cargo from
Bahia and other ports. Part of the freight were four hundred rough diamonds
valued at £4000. These packages were consigned to Messrs. Shroeder of
London; and as it was known that they were to arrive in Ker’s ship, one of
the owners had met her at Deal, but the captain had already absconded with
the packages of precious stones in his pocket. Ker came at once to London,
and, by the help of the landlord of a public-house in Smithfield and others,
disposed of the whole of the diamonds. A Jew named Benjamin effected the
sale to certain merchants named Blogg and Martin, who declared that the
rough diamond market was in such a depressed condition that they could
only afford to give £1750 for stones worth £4000. The circumstances of this
purchase of brilliants from a stranger at such an inadequate price was
strongly commented upon at Ker’s trial. The moment it was discovered that
the diamonds had disappeared, the affair was taken up by the police.
Forrester, the detective who had pursued and captured Burgess at Boston,

[117] tracked Ker to France, and following him there, eventually captured
him at Montreuil. He was arraigned at the Old Bailey, and the case fully
proved. His sentence was seven years’ transportation.
The gravest crimes continued at intervals to inspire the town with horror,
and concentrate public attention upon the gaol of Newgate, and the
murderers immured within its walls. Courvoisier’s case made a great stir.
There was unusual atrocity in this murder of an aged, infirm gentleman, a
scion of the ducal house of Bedford, by his confidential valet and personal
attendant. Lord William Russell lived alone in Norfolk Street, Park Lane.
He was a widower, and seventy-three years of age. One morning in May his
lordship was found dead in his bed with his throat cut. The fact of the
murder was first discovered by the housemaid, who, on going down early,
was surprised to find the dining-room in a state of utter confusion; the
furniture turned upside down, the drawers of the escritoire open and rifled,
a bundle lying on the floor, as though thieves had been interrupted in the
act. The housemaid summoned the cook, and both went to call the valet,
Courvoisier, who came from his room ready dressed, a suspicious
circumstance, as he was always late in the morning. The housemaid
suggested that they should see if his lordship was all right, and the three
went to his bed-room. While Courvoisier opened the shutters, the
housemaid, approaching the bed, saw that the pillow was saturated with
blood.

Courvoisier.

The discovery of the murdered man immediately followed. The
neighbourhood was alarmed, the police sent for, and a close inquiry

forthwith commenced. That Lord William Russell had committed suicide
was at once declared impossible. It was also clearly proved that no forcible
entry had been made into the house; the fresh marks of violence upon the
door had evidently been made inside, and not from outside; moreover, the
instruments, poker and chisel, by which they had no doubt been effected,
were found in the butler’s pantry, used by Courvoisier. The researches of
the police soon laid bare other suspicious facts. The bundle found in the
dining-room contained, with clothes, various small articles of plate and
jewellery which a thief would probably have put into his pocket. Upstairs in
the bed-room a rouleaux box for sovereigns had been broken open, also the
jewel-box and note-case, from the latter of which was abstracted a ten-
pound note known to have been in the possession of the deceased. His
lordship’s watch was gone. Further suspicion was caused by the position of
a book and a wax candle by the bedside. The latter was so placed that it
could throw no light on the former, which was a ‘Life of Sir Samuel
Romilly.’ The intention of the real murderer to shift the crime to burglars
was evident although futile, and the police, feeling convinced that the crime
had been committed by some inmate of the house, took Courvoisier into
custody, and placed the two female servants under surveillance. The valet’s
strange demeanour had attracted attention from the first. He had hung over
the body in a state of dreadful agitation, answering no questions, and taking
no part in the proceedings.
Three days later a close search of the butler’s pantry produced fresh
circumstantial evidence. Behind the skirting board several of his lordship’s
rings were discovered; near it was his Waterloo medal, and the above-
mentioned ten-pound note. Further investigation was rewarded by the
discovery in the pantry of a split gold ring, used by Lord William to carry
his keys on; next, and in the same place, a chased gold key; and at last his
lordship’s watch was found secreted under the leads of the sink. All this was
evidence sufficient to warrant Courvoisier’s committal for trial; but still he
found friends, and a liberal subscription was raised among the foreign
servants in London to provide funds for his defence. Courvoisier, when put
on his trial, pleaded not guilty; but on the second day the discovery of fresh
evidence, more particularly the recovery of some of Lord William’s stolen
plate, induced the prisoner to make a full confession of his crime to the
lawyers who defended him. This placed them in a position of much
embarrassment. To have thrown up their brief would have been to have

secured Courvoisier’s conviction. Mr. Phillips, who led in the case, went to
the other extreme, and in an impassioned address implored the jury not to
send an innocent man to the gallows. It will be remembered that the
question whether Mr. Phillips had not exceeded the limits usually allowed
to counsel was much debated at the time.
The jury without hesitation found Courvoisier guilty, and he was
sentenced to death. The prisoner’s demeanour had greatly changed during
the trial. Coolness amounting almost to effrontery gave way to hopeless
dejection. On his removal to Newgate after sentence, he admitted that he
had been justly convicted, and expressed great anxiety that his fellow-
servants should be relieved from all suspicion. Later in the day he tried to
commit suicide by cramming a towel down his throat, but was prevented.
Next morning he made a full confession in presence of his attorney, and the
governor, Mr. Cope. In this he gave as the motives of his crime a quarrel he
had with his master, who threatened to discharge him without a character.
Lord William, according to the valet, was of a peevish, difficult temper; he
was annoyed with his man for various small omissions and acts of
forgetfulness, and on the night of the murder had taken Courvoisier to task
rather sharply. Finally, on coming downstairs after bed-time, Lord William
had found Courvoisier in the dining-room. “What are you doing here?”
asked his lordship. “You can have no good intentions; you must quit my
service to-morrow morning.” This seems to have decided Courvoisier, who
took a carving-knife from the sideboard in the dining-room, went upstairs to
Lord William’s bed-room, and drew the knife across his throat. “He
appeared to die instantly,” said the murderer, in conclusion. His account of
his acts and movements after the deed varied so considerably in the several
documents he left behind, that too much reliance cannot be placed upon his
confession. His last statement contains the words, “The public now think I
am a liar, and they will not believe me when I say the truth.” This was no
doubt the case, but this much truth his confession may be taken to contain:
that Courvoisier was idle, discontented, ready to take offence, greedy of
gain; that he could not resist the opportunity for robbery offered him by his
situation at Lord William Russell’s; that when vexed with his master he did
not shrink from murder, both for revenge and to conceal his other crimes.
Courvoisier wished to commit suicide in Newgate, but was prevented by
the vigilant supervision to which he was subjected while in gaol. The
attempt was to have been made by opening a vein and allowing himself to

bleed to death. The Sunday night before his execution he would not go to
bed when ordered. The governor insisted, but Courvoisier showed great
reluctance to strip. The order was, however, at length obeyed, and the whole
of the prisoner’s clothes were minutely searched. In the pocket of the coat
Mr. Cope, the governor, found a neatly-folded cloth, and asked what it was
for. Courvoisier admitted that he had intended to bind it tightly round his
arm and bleed himself to death in the night. The next inquiry was how he
hoped to open a vein. “With a bit of sharpened stick picked out of the
ordinary firewood.” “Where is it?” asked the governor. The prisoner replied
that he had left it in the mattress of which he had just been deprived. The
bed was searched, but no piece of sharpened wood was found. It was
thought that it might have been lost in changing the mattresses. The cloth
above referred to belonged to the inner seam of his trousers, which he had
managed to tear out. There is nothing to show that Courvoisier really
contemplated self-destruction.
A murder which reproduced many of the features of that committed by
Greenacre soon followed, and excited the public mind even more than that
of Courvoisier’s. Daniel Good’s crime might have remained long
undiscovered but for his own careless stupidity. He was coachman to a
gentleman at Roehampton. One day he went into a pawnbroker’s at
Wandsworth, and bought a pair of breeches on credit. At the same time he
was seen to steal and secrete a pair of trousers. The shop-boy gave
information. Good was followed to his stables by a policeman, but
obstinately denied the theft. The policeman insisted on searching the
premises, at which Good displayed some uneasiness. This increased when
the officer, accompanied by two others, a neighbour and a bailiff, entered
one of the stables. Good now offered to go to Wandsworth and satisfy the
pawnbroker. Just at this moment, however, the searchers found concealed
under two trusses of hay a woman’s headless and dismembered trunk. At
the constable’s cry of alarm Good rushed from the stable and locked the
door behind him. Some time elapsed before the imprisoned party could
force open the doors, and by then the fugitive had escaped. Medical
assistance having been summoned, it was ascertained how the
dismemberment had been effected. At the same time an overpowering
odour attracted them to the adjoining harness-room, where the missing
remains were raked out half consumed in the ashes of a wood fire. In the
same room a large axe and saw were found covered with blood.

Inquiry into the character of Good exposed him as a loose liver, who
“kept company” with several women. One called his sister, but supposed to
be his wife, had occupied a room in South Street, Manchester Square, with
a son of Good’s by a former wife. Another wife, real or fictitious, existed in
Spitalfields, and evidence was given of close relation between Good and a
third woman, a girl named Butcher, residing at Woolwich. The victim was
the first of these three. Good had told her, much to her perturbation, that she
was to move from South Street to Roehampton, and one day he fetched her.
They were seen together on Barnes Common, and again in Putney Park
Lane, where they were talking loud and angrily. The poor creature was
never seen again alive. The actual method of the murder was never exactly
ascertained. Good himself remained at large for some weeks. He had
tramped as far as Tunbridge, where he obtained work as a bricklayer’s
labourer; he there gave satisfaction for industry, but he was taciturn, and
would hold no converse with his fellows. The woman where he lodged
noticed that he was very restless at night, moaning and sighing much.
Detection came unexpectedly. He was recognized by an ex-policeman who
had known him at Roehampton, and immediately arrested. In his effects
were found the clothes he had on at the time of his escape from the stables,
and under the jacket he was wearing was a piece of a woman’s calico apron
stained with blood, which he had used to save the pressure on his shoulder
by the hod. Good was committed to Newgate, and tried at the Central
Criminal Court before a crowded court. He made a rambling defence,
ending by saying, “Good ladies and gentlemen all, I have a great deal more
to say, but I am so bad I cannot say it.” The case was clearly proved against
him, and he was condemned, sentenced, and duly executed.
Hocker’s murder is in its way interesting, as affording another proof of
the extraordinary way in which the culprit returned to the scene of his guilt.
The cries of his victim, a Mr. Delarue, brought passers-by and policemen to
the spot, a lonely place near a dead wall beyond Belsize Hall, Hampstead,
but too late to give substantial aid. While the body lay there still warm,
battered and bleeding from the cruel blows inflicted upon him by his
cowardly assailant, a man came by singing. He entered into conversation
with the policemen, and learnt, as it seemed for the first time, what had
happened. His remark was, “It is a nasty job;” he took hold of the dead
hand, and confessed that he felt “queer” at the shocking sight. This sight
was his own handiwork, yet he could not overcome the strange fascination

it had for him, and remained by the side of the corpse till the stretcher came.
Even then he followed it as far as Belsize Lane. It was here that the others
engaged in their dismal office in removing the dead first got a good look at
the stranger’s face. He wanted a light for a cigar, and got it from a lantern
which was lifted up and fully betrayed his features. It was noticed that he
wore a mackintosh. Next day the police, in making a careful search of the
scene of the murder, picked up a coat-button, which afterwards played an
important part in the identification of the murderer. A letter, which afforded
an additional clue, was also found in the pocket of the deceased. Still it was
many weeks before any arrest was made. In the mean time the police were
not idle. It came out by degrees that the person who had been seen in
Belsize Lane on the night the body was found was a friend of the deceased.
His name was Hocker; he was by trade a ladies’ shoemaker; and it was also
ascertained that after the day of the murder he was flush of money. He was
soon afterwards arrested on suspicion, and a search of his lodgings brought
to light several garments saturated with blood; a coat among them much
torn and stained, with three buttons missing, one of which corresponded
with that picked up at Hampstead. The letter found in the pocket of the
deceased was sealed with a wafer marked F, and many of the same sort
were found in the possession of the accused. This was enough to obtain a
committal, after several remands; but the case contained elements of doubt,
and the evidence at the trial was entirely circumstantial. A witness deposed
to meeting Hocker, soon after the cries of murder were heard, running at a
dog-trot into London, and others swore that they plainly recognized him as
the man seen soon afterwards in the lane. A woman whom he called on the
same evening declared he had worn a mackintosh, his coat was much torn,
there was a stain of blood on his shirt-cuff, and he was in possession, the
first time to her knowledge, of a watch. This was Delarue’s watch, fully
identified as such, which Hocker told his brother Delarue had given him the
morning of the murder.
These were damnatory facts which well supported the prosecution. The
prisoner made an elaborate defence, in which he sought to vilify the
character of deceased as the seducer of an innocent girl to whom he
(Hocker) had been fondly attached. When her ruin was discovered her
brother panted for revenge. Hocker, whose skill in counterfeiting
handwriting was known, was asked to fabricate a letter making an
assignation with Delarue in a lonely part of Hampstead. Hocker and the

brother went to the spot, where the latter left him to meet his sister’s
seducer alone. Soon afterwards Hocker heard cries of “murder,” and
proceeding to where they came from, found Delarue dead, slain by the
furious brother. Hocker was so overcome, feeling himself the principal
cause of the tragedy, that he rushed to a slaughter-house in Hampstead and
purposely stained his clothes with blood. Such an extravagant defence did
not weigh with judge or jury; the first summed up dead against the prisoner,
and the latter, after retiring for ten minutes, found him guilty. Hocker’s
conduct in Newgate while under sentence of death was most extraordinary.
He drew up several long statements, containing narratives purely fictitious,
imputing crimes to his victim, and repeating his line of defence, that
Delarue had suffered by the hands of imaginary outraged brothers acting as
the avengers of females deeply injured by him. Hocker made several
pretended confessions and revelations, all of which were proved to be
absolutely false by the police on inquiry. His demeanour was a strange
compound of wickedness, falsehood, and deceit. But at the fatal hour his
hardihood forsook him, and he was almost insensible when taken out of his
cell for execution. Restoratives were applied, but he was in a fainting
condition when tied, and had to be supported by the assistant executioner
while Calcraft adjusted the noose.
There was an epidemic of murder in the United Kingdom about 1848-9.
In November of the first-named year occurred the wholesale slaughter of
the Jermys in their house, Stanfield Hall, by the miscreant Rush. Soon
afterwards, in Gloucestershire, a maidservant, Sarah Thomas, murdered her
mistress, an aged woman, by beating out her brains with a stone. Next year
John Gleeson Wilson, at Liverpool, murdered a woman, Ann Henrichson,
also a maidservant and two children; while in Ireland a wife dashed out her
husband’s brains with a hammer. London did not escape the contagion, and
prominent among the detestable crimes of the period stands that of the
Mannings at Bermondsey. These great criminals suffered at Horsemonger
Lane Gaol, but they were tried at the Central Criminal Court, and were for
some time inmates of Newgate. Their victim was a man named Patrick
O’Connor, a Custom-House gauger, who had been a suitor of Marie de
Roux before she became Mrs. Manning. Marie de Roux up to the time of
her marriage had been in service as lady’s-maid to Lady Blantyre, daughter
of the Duchess of Sutherland, and Manning hoped to get some small
Government appointment through his wife’s interest. He had failed in this

as well as in the business of a publican, which he had at one time adopted.
After the marriage a close intimacy was still maintained between O’Connor
and the Mannings. He lived at Mile End, whence he walked often to call at
3, Minver Place, Bermondsey, the residence of his old love. O’Connor was
a man of substance. He had long followed the profitable trade of a money-
lender, and by dint of usurious interest on small sums advanced to needy
neighbours, had amassed as much as £8000 or £10,000. His wealth was
well known to “Maria,” as he called Mrs. Manning, who made several
ineffectual attempts to get money out of him. At last this fiendish woman
made up her mind to murder O’Connor and appropriate all his possessions.
Her husband, to whom she coolly confided her intention, a heavy brutish
fellow, was yet aghast at his wife’s resolve, and tried hard to dissuade her
from her bad purpose. In his confession after sentence he declared that she
plied him well with brandy at this period, and that during the whole time he
was never in his right senses. Meanwhile this woman, unflinching in her
cold, bloody determination, carefully laid all her plans for the
consummation of the deed.
One fine afternoon in August, O’Connor was met walking in the
direction of Bermondsey. He was dressed with particular care, as he was to
dine at the Mannings and meet friends, one a young lady. He was seen
afterwards smoking and talking with his hosts in their back parlour, and
never seen again alive. It came out in the husband’s confession that Mrs.
Manning induced O’Connor to go down to the kitchen to wash his hands,
that she followed him to the basement, that she stood behind him as he
stood near the open grave she herself had dug for him, and which he
mistook for a drain, and that while he was speaking to her she put the
muzzle of a pistol close to the back of his head and shot him down. She ran
upstairs, told her husband, made him go down to look at her handiwork, and
as O’Connor was not quite dead, Manning gave the coup de grâce with a
crowbar. After this Mrs. Manning changed her dress and went off in a cab to
O’Connor’s lodgings, which, having possessed herself of the murdered
man’s keys, she rifled from end to end. Returning to her own home, where
Manning meantime had been calmly smoking and talking to the neighbours
over the basement wall, the corpse lying just inside the kitchen all the
while, the two set to work to strip the body and hide it under the stones of
the floor. This job was not completed till the following day, as the hole had
to be enlarged, and the only tool they had was a dust-shovel. A quantity of

quicklime was thrown in with the body to destroy all identification. This
was on a Thursday evening. For the remainder of that week and part of the
next the murderers stayed in the house, and occupied the kitchen, close to
the remains of their victim. On the Sunday Mrs. Manning roasted a goose at
this same kitchen fire, and ate it with relish in the afternoon. This cold-
blooded indifference after the event was only outdone by the premeditation
of this horrible murder. The hole must have been excavated and the
quicklime purchased quite three weeks before O’Connor met his death, and
during that time he must frequently have stood or sat over his own grave.
Discovery of the murder came in this wise. O’Connor, a punctual and
well-conducted official, was at once missed at the London Docks. On the
third day his friends began to inquire for him, and at their request two
police officers were sent to Bermondsey to inquire for him at the Mannings,
with whom it was well known that he was very intimate. The Mannings had
seen or heard nothing of him, of course. As O’Connor still did not turn up,
the police after a couple of days returned to Minver Place. The house was
empty, bare and stripped of all its furniture, and its former occupants had
decamped. The circumstance was suspicious, and a search was at once
made of the whole premises. In the back kitchen one of the detectives
remarked that the cement between certain stones looked lighter than the
rest, and on trying it with a knife, he found that it was soft and new, while
elsewhere it was set and hard. The stones were at once taken up; beneath
them was a layer of fresh mortar, beneath that a lot of loose earth, amongst
which a stocking was turned up, and presently a human toe. Six inches
lower the body of O’Connor was uncovered. He was lying on his face, his
legs tied up to his hips so as to allow of the body fitting into the hole. The
lime had done its work so rapidly that the features would have been
indistinguishable but for the prominent chin and a set of false teeth.
The corpse settled all doubts, and the next point was to lay hands upon
the Mannings. It was soon ascertained that the wife had gone off in a cab
with a quantity of luggage. Part of this she had deposited to be left till
called for at one station, while she had gone herself to another, that at
Euston Square. At the first the boxes were impounded, opened, and found to
contain many of O’Connor’s effects. At the second exact information was
obtained of Mrs. Manning’s movements. She had gone to Edinburgh. A
telegraphic message, then newly adapted to the purposes of criminal
detection, advised the Edinburgh police of the whole affair, and within an

hour an answer was telegraphed, stating that Mrs. Manning was in custody.
She had been to brokers to negotiate the sale of certain foreign railway
stock, with which they had been warned from London not to deal, and they
had given information to the police. Her arrest was planned, and, when the
telegram arrived from London, completed. An examination of her boxes
disclosed a quantity of O’Connor’s property. Mrs. Manning was transferred
to London and lodged in the Horsemonger Lane Gaol, where her husband
soon afterwards joined her. He had fled to Jersey, where he was recognized
and arrested. Each tried to throw the blame on the other; Manning declared
his wife had committed the murder, Mrs. Manning indignantly denied the
charge.
The prisoners were in due course transferred to Newgate, to be put upon
their trial at the Central Criminal Court. A great number of distinguished
people assembled as usual at the Old Bailey on the day of trial. The
Mannings were arraigned together; the husband standing at one of the front
corners of the dock, his wife at the other end. Manning, who was dressed in
black, appeared to be a heavy, bull-necked, repulsive-looking man, with a
very fair complexion and light hair. Mrs. Manning was not without personal
charms; her face was comely, she had dark hair and good eyes, and was
above the middle height, yet inclined to be stout. She was smartly dressed
in a plaid shawl, a white lace cap; her hair was dressed in long crêpe bands.
She had lace ruffles at her wrist, and wore primrose-coloured kid gloves.
The case rested upon the facts which have been already set forth, and was
proved to the satisfaction of the jury, who brought in a verdict of guilty.
Manning, when sentence of death was passed on him, said nothing; but
Mrs. Manning, speaking in a foreign accent, addressed the court with great
fluency and vehemence. She complained that she had no justice; there was
no law for her, she had found no protection either from judges, the
prosecutor, or her husband. She had not been treated like a Christian, but
like a wild beast of the forest. She declared that the money found in her
possession had been sent her from abroad; that O’Connor had been more to
her than her husband, that she ought to have married him. It was against
common sense to charge her with murdering the only friend she had in the
world; the culprit was really her husband, who killed O’Connor out of
jealousy and revengeful feelings. When the judge assumed the black cap
Mrs. Manning became still more violent, shouting, “No, no, I will not stand
it! You ought to be ashamed of yourselves!” and would have left the dock

had not Mr. Cope, the governor of Newgate, restrained her. After judgment
was passed she repeatedly cried out Shame! and stretching out her hand, she
gathered up a quantity of the rue which, following ancient custom dating
from the days of the gaol fever, was strewn in front of the dock, and
sprinkled it towards the bench with a contemptuous gesture.
On being removed to Newgate from the court Mrs. Manning became
perfectly furious. She uttered loud imprecations, cursing judge, jury,
barristers, witnesses, and all who stood around. Her favourite and most
often-repeated expression was, “D—n seize you all.” They had to handcuff
her by force against the most violent resistance, and still she raged and
stormed, shaking her clenched and manacled hands in the officers’ faces.
From Newgate the Mannings were taken in separate cabs to Horsemonger
Lane Gaol. On this journey her manner changed completely. She became
flippant, joked with the officers, asked how they liked her “resolution” in
the dock, and expressed the utmost contempt for her husband, whom she
never intended to acknowledge or speak to again. Later her mood changed
to abject despair. On reaching the condemned cell she threw herself upon
the floor and shrieked in an hysterical agony of tears. After this, until the
day of execution, she recovered her spirits, and displayed reckless
effrontery, mocking at the chaplain, and turning a deaf ear to the counsels of
a benevolent lady who came to visit. Now she abused the jury, now called
Manning a vagabond, and through all ate heartily at every meal, slept
soundly at nights, and talked with cheerfulness on almost any subject.
Nevertheless, she attempted to commit suicide by driving her nails,
purposely left long, into her throat. She was discovered just as she was
getting black in the face. Manning’s demeanour was more in harmony with
his situation, and the full confession he made elucidated all dark and
uncertain points in connection with the crime. The actual execution, which
took place at another prison than Newgate, is rather beyond the scope of
this work. But it may be mentioned that the concourse was so enormous
that it drew down the well-merited and trenchant disapproval of Charles
Dickens, who wrote to the ‘Times,’ saying that he believed “a sight so
inconceivably awful as the wickedness and levity of the immense crowd
collected at the execution this morning could be imagined by no man, and
presented by no heathen land under the sun. The horrors of the gibbet, and
of the crime which brought the wretched murderers to it, faded in my mind
before the atrocious bearing, looks, and language of the assembled